Twelve Fingers

Chapter 1 ONE Banja Luka, Bosnia-1897 At the same instant that the tragedy was taking place in Ouro Preto, in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka, on the banks of the Vrbas River, Dimitri Borja Korozec was born. Dimitri's story is curious to say the least. His mother, Isabel, is a Brazilian contortionist born in Sao Borja, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Daughter of a beautiful black slave from the Bantu nation and an unknown father, she came into the world on September 28, 1871, born free of the fetters of slavery: as the pampas echoed her first cries, in Rio de Janeiro Princess Isabel was signing the Law of the Free Womb, declaring that all children born to slaves were free at birth. The girl was baptized with the name of her benefactress and that of her birthplace. As was common in such cases, the evil tongues of the town swore that the little mixed-blood girl was the illegitimate fruit of a carnal rapture of the young lieutenant colonel Manuel do Nascimento Vargas, later to be the father of Getulio. Manuel had distinguished himself as a military hero in the Paraguayan War and, still single at the age of twenty-six, had established himself in 1870 as a rancher in Sao Borja. The insinuation had been vehemently denied and discounted as gossip. Nevertheless, the surprising resemblance between the little girl and the rancher had fed this slander. In 1890, Isabel had arrived in Bosnia as part of an Italian circus. At fifteen the young woman had run away from home with an acrobat-clown, one of the Brothers Temperani, when the famous troupe had toured Brazil in 1886. In her baggage were two gifts from her mother: a photograph of Princess Isabel and the novel Mota Coqueiro, by Jose do Patrocinio, the great black abolitionist hero. In Doboj, the young woman deserts her juggling clown for Ivan Korozec, a Serbian linotypist who fell in love with the dark-skinned Brazilian woman and followed her throughout her Balkan tour. A hardened anarchist, Ivan is affiliated with the cabalistic Poluskopzi brotherhood. At that time there was an ancient secret Russian society, the Skopzi, or "the Castrati of Russia," whose adherents castrated themselves to attain spiritual wholeness. Those initiated into the Poluskopzi, or "Half Castrati," an ultraradical sect, practice the removal of just one of the testicles: the right one. The gesture is political, symbolizing that all of their descendants will perforce be of the left. The inflexible Poluskopzi boasts fewer than forty members. Fate and Ivan's monotesticular libido decree that Isabel quickly becomes pregnant. A dedicated artist, she works until the very hour of delivery. When the circus appears in Banja Luka, after a nine-month tour, the public is astonished to see that lovely young woman contorting her enormous belly in the center ring. In the final days, Ivan Korozec begins to fear that the child will be born right there, twisted and amid lions and clowns. His fears are unfounded: Dimitri is born in the wagon of a Bulgarian trapeze artist with the bearded lady as midwife. He is a perfect creature except that he has an extra index finger on each hand. This anomaly is neither shocking nor greatly noted, for the twelve fingers are totally symmetrical. The newborn is bathed at once in the waters of the Vrbas and seven days later, over Isabel's protests, as dictated by Poluskopzi ritual, his right testicle is removed and eaten by his father. If he were an adult, the excised gonad would be swallowed by the Grand Master of the order, Boris Kafelnikov, an obscure tailor from Vladivostok. To the amazement and pride of the semicastrati who participate in the ceremony, the baby does not cry. From early on, Dimitri, or Dimo, as his parents call him, speaks not only Serbo-Croatian, his father's language, but also Portuguese, which his mother had taught him by reading and rereading JosSoares, Jose Eugenio is the author of 'Twelve Fingers' with ISBN 9780375408939 and ISBN 0375408932.