Balcao to Balcao

A local poder in rural Goa sends the eager youth of his vaddo on a wild goose chase looking for a missing, jet-lagged foreigner with beautiful big brown melting eyes and maybe blond hair. Guess who shows up the next day!

Ubaldo Costa was a proud poder, a Goan bread maker just like his father and his father’s father before him. Everyone agreed he was as naive and childlike today as the day when a jackfruit fell on his head twenty years ago. Everyone also looked forward to hearing the high-pitched ‘po-po’ of his bicycle horn because it heralded the arrival of fresh, hot poi along with fresh, juicy bits of gossip. His little vaddo in Bambolim was rather fond of their local poder.

The afternoon had started off like any other afternoon in the Goan paradise of eternal sunshine or pouring rain. Ubaldo stacked the day’s batch of hot poi neatly in the box on his bicycle and set off on his regular round. His bicycle had gone down this route many, many times. He could ride almost all the way without so much as touching the handlebars, which was fortunate because what was holding the box behind him had also seen better days. First, as bicycle inner tubes and now as makeshift bungee cords. His hands, it turned out, were essential to keeping the poi box from falling by the wayside.

His first stop was the Braganca house, now owned by the Canada returned Norma Saldanha. Mrs. Saldanha had bought the house the Portuguese had given Domingo Joao Hector Braganca the day they left Goa. He had immediately locked the gates on the street at both ends of his property. People on their way to Panjim or Margao had to stop, use the side gate to walk up the steps of his balcao, knock, and ask him, very politely, to open the gates and let them pass. Day or night, old man Domingo obliged without complaint, painstakingly opening two locks at each gate, letting the vehicle in, locking the gate, and then walking over to the other gate to do the same to let them out.

Domingo Braganca died a happy man before the new national highway connected Panjim to Margao and robbed him of his traffic control powers. His son, Pedro, tried to live in the house but found that money did not grow on trees, or in Paulo’s bar, where he spent most of his days. So, when Mrs. Saldanha came along with her Canadian dollars, Pedro was very happy to take them and adjust his lifestyle to full-time bar duty.

“Oh, Ubaldo!” Mrs. Saldanha exclaimed. “I am so happy to see you. I don’t know what to do. My Annabelle has run away.”

“Annabelle?” Ubaldo asked, puzzled by the mention of someone he did not know.

“Yes,” a distraught Mrs. Saldanha continued, “I picked her up from the airport early this morning. She seemed fine, just a bit jet-lagged. We came home but she did not want to eat anything so we went to bed. A few hours later, she was gone.”

“She did not come back?” Ubaldo asked, leaning his bicycle on his hip.

“No,” Mrs. Saldanha sobbed, “what if something happens to her. She does not even know this place. Oh! I can just see the confusion in her beautiful big brown melting eyes.”

“Don’t worry, we will find her.” Ubaldo said grimly. “In our vaddo, we take care of our own. I will spread the word.” With that, Ubaldo rode off, now with a higher purpose driving him forward.

“Mrs. Saldanha’s daughter, Annabelle, is missing,” he announced to a surprised Doreen Pacheco sitting on her balcao peering into the box of hot poi intent, until then, on choosing the two best poi of the lot. “She was jet-lagged after her flight from Canada and walks in her sleep.”

Doreen Pacheco lived down the street, unhappily aware of that woman who now lived in the house she had hoped to inherit from her uncle Domingo after taking care of him for so many years.

“Maybe she did not like the house,” Doreen suggested. “Maybe they will move,” she added wistfully.

“She is lost and all alone in this world.” Ubaldo added, not very helpfully.

“What does she look like?” Doreen asked Ubaldo, mildly interested in Annabelle’s fate but intensely curious to know more about that woman’s foreign-born daughter.

“She has big brown melting eyes.” Ubaldo replied.

“Who has big brown melting eyes” asked Pedro listening in on Ubaldo’s conversation with Paulo Furtado as the two men stood in front of Paulo’s balcao, which also served as the entrance to his corner store and unlicensed back room bar.

“Mrs. Saldanha’s daughter, Annabelle.” Ubaldo repeated loudly for the benefit of all passers-by. “She was jet lagged after her flight from Canada. She disappeared early this morning. She is tall, beautiful, with big brown melting eyes.”

“She did not tell me her daughter was coming,” interjected Isabel Coutinho, part-time cook at Norma Saldanha’s house and full-time gossip. “I am going to ask for more money if I have to cook for more and more people. Is the poi fresh?”

Ubaldo dutifully reached in for what he swore was the freshest, most soft poi. Then he continued on his way spreading the word across the vaddo as he had promised Mrs. Saldanha.

Word had spread across the vaddo by the time Ubaldo stacked the day’s batch of hot poi neatly in the box on his bicycle and set off on his regular round the next afternoon. Balcaos were buzzing with salient descriptions of willowy, disoriented Canadian blondes. Youths were prowling the vaddo on the lookout for tall beauties with big brown melting eyes.

Ubaldo was startled by the spirited barking the high-pitched ‘po-po’ of his bicycle horn elicited when he reached the Braganca house. For the first time since Mrs. Saldanha had moved in, the front gate was closed and a dog stood on the wall ready to defend it.

“Annabelle!” Mrs. Saldanha called from her kitchen window, “sweetheart, it is only Ubaldo.”