Hamlet’s Lament - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 375

putit,“horrible varadouros .”Atdawn,nearthepostofCarneirodeTal,theyburiedEuc-
lides da Cunha's oldest son.
The police scribe, in the same mournful article, reported that as Solon said his good-
byes embarking from Tarauacá, he had been certain he would die on the expedition and
so had left final letters for his brother and fiancée. 6 The good citizens of Tarauacá erec-
tedamonumenttoSolon,amarkofaffectionandofhisprestigewithinthelocalsociety.
Where his actual remains now lie is not known.
. . .
We do not know what was in the letter from Solon to his brother Quidinho, who would
outlive him by only two and a half months. We do know that Euclides Jr. nurtured a
profound hatred for his stepfather. Partly this was explained by the obvious affection
andcompatibilitybetweenEuclidesIandII.Quidinho'slifewithNestor,whoseloathing
for Ana and Dilermando was unmuted and implacable, cannot have helped. Even Quid-
inho'sgrandmotherwasrepulsedbythesituation: asshewrotetoEuclides'ssister,“You
mourn a brother, but I lament that I ever gave life to my daughter.”
With Such Cozenage
WhenAnamarriedDilermandouponhisreleasetwoyearsaftertheincidentsatPiedade,
Quidinho (Euclides II) was sent to boarding schools, where the scandal was so widely
known that his mother could not visit him lest he become the brunt of even greater
abuse. Ana was seen as a person of questionable morals, with a taste for adolescents, so
therewereevensomereservationsabouttheproprietyofAna'scallingataboy'sschool.
While Quidinho was tutored by Nestor, the venom regarding “the situation” was palp-
able. At the heart of his condition was Hamlet's lament:
[He] hath kill'd my king and whored my mother;
. . . And with such cozenage—'tis not perfect conscience,
To quit him with this arm? And is't not to be damn'd
To let this canker of our nature come in further evil? 7
How then, did it happen that on July 4, 1916, Euclides da Cunha II went to the Vara
dosÓrfãos(thesocial service administration fororphans)andsoughtoutDilermando de
Assis,whoastonishinglymanagedtosurvivefourshotsfromtheyoungerdaCunhaand,
as happened with the father, was able even with multiple wounds to aim true enough to
kill him?
EversincethedreadfulSaturdaythatprecededhisfather'sdeath,theyoungerEuclides
had lived in torment. Letters he wrote later from boarding school to his mother suggest
how painful his life had become and how torn he was in his filial affections: