The Violent Land (14 page)

The worker from Ceará had left his wife and daughter there. He had been going to return as soon as word came of the first showers, his pockets bulging with money from the south, money to begin life anew in his own country. But now he was afraid. The candlelight was increasing and diminishing the dead man's smile. The lean man agreed with the old fellow.

“There's no difference,” he said.

The old man put out the candle and stuck it in his pocket; then slowly they lifted the hammock, he and his younger companion. The lean man opened the door for them.

“And what about his daughters,” the Negro inquired, “the whores?”

“Yes?” said the old man.

“Where do they live?”

“In the rua do Sapo. It's the second house.”

Then the old fellow turned to the man from Ceará:

“Nobody ever goes back from here. You're tied to the store from the day you come. If you want to leave, go this very night; tomorrow will be too late. If you want to go, come along with us; maybe you'll be good enough to help us carry him. Afterwards it will be too late.”

The newcomer was still in doubt. The old man and the youth were standing there, the hammock slung over their shoulders.

“And where will I go? What will I do?”

No one had an answer for him; that question had not occurred to any of them. Not even the old man, nor the lean man with the cynical, jesting voice. Nor the young man, either. They stood staring at the door. The Negro crossed himself out of respect to the corpse, but at that moment he was thinking of the three daughters, the three whores. Rua do Sapo, second house. He would go around there the next time he was in Ferradas. The man from Ceará stared after the pair as they were swallowed up in the night.

“I'm going, too!” he suddenly exclaimed.

Feverishly he began throwing his things together and, sobbing a farewell, he ran out. The lean man closed the door behind him.

“And where's he going to go?” Seeing that no one replied to his question, he answered it himself: “To another plantation, where it will be the same thing as here.”

He blew out the light.

Some while before, from the door of his bedroom, Horacio had bidden Lawyer Virgilio good night; the latter was sleeping in the front room.

“Sleep well, colonel,” came the sonorous and fastidiously polite response.

In the silence of the room Ester was opening and closing her hands upon her bosom, as though to stifle the beating of her heart. From the drawing-room came Maneca Dantas's measured snores. Their friend, having yielded to the attorney the guest-room which he usually occupied, was lying in a hammock that had been strung up in the parlour. From the darkness Ester followed the movements of her husband. She was experiencing a very definite sensation, the feeling of Virgilio's presence in the other room. Horacio was undressing in the dark, and she could hear the sound made by his boots as he dropped them to the floor. Seated on the edge of the bed, he was in a joyful mood; he had been almost childishly happy ever since Ester, at the table, had consented to play the piano at his request. From where he sat he could hear his wife's breathing. Taking off his shirt and trousers, he put on his nightgown with little red flowers embroidered on the front of it.

Then he rose to shut the door that led from the bedroom to the room where the child slept, watched over by Felicia. Ester had been strongly opposed to this arrangement and had insisted that the door must remain always open; for she was afraid that during the night snakes might come in and strangle the little one. But Horacio was now slowly closing it. With eyes wide open in the dark, she continued to follow his movements.

She knew that he was going to take her tonight; he always closed the door between the two bedrooms when he wanted to possess her. But tonight—and this was the strangest of all the strange things that had happened that evening—for the first time Ester did not have that obscure feeling of repulsion which was renewed in her whenever Horacio sought to make love. Other times she would unconsciously huddle in the bed as a shudder ran over her, along her belly, up and down her arms, and around her heart. She would feel her body closing to him in anguish. But tonight she felt nothing of all this. Was it, possibly, for the reason that, while her eyes from the darkness of the room might be spying on Horacio, her mind was in the front bedroom, where Virgilio was sleeping? But was he sleeping? Perhaps he was not; perhaps he was thinking of her, as his own eyes pierced the darkness and the door, made their way down the corridor and through the other door, for a glimpse of her body beneath the cambric nightgown. She shuddered at the thought of it. The very presence of Virgilio in the other room gave her an expansive feeling. She smiled, and Horacio thought that her smile was for him. He, too, was happy tonight. For him it was a new dawn, an unhoped-for spring, a happiness to which he had never dared look forward. He was holding her lovely head in his hands, when suddenly there was a knocking at the front door. Pausing in his caress, Horacio listened attentively. He could hear Maneca Dantas rising as the knocks were repeated, could hear the bolt being drawn and the door opened as his friend inquired who was there. Ester's head was in his hands, and her eyelids now slowly parted. Maneca's footsteps were drawing near, and Horacio was compelled to abandon his wife's body and its pleasing warmth. His eyes grew small with a sudden anger at this unfortunate interruption on Maneca's part. From the corridor the latter's voice could be heard.

“Horacio! Friend Horacio!”

“What is it?”

“Come here a minute. It's something serious.”

From the other room came Virgilio's voice: “Am I needed?”

“You can come, too, doctor,” Maneca told him.

“What is it, Horacio?” Ester asked, in a choking voice, from the bed.

Horacio turned to her. Smiling, he put a hand to her face.

“I'm going to see. I'll be back.”

“I'll go, too.”

As he left, she rose from the bed and slipped on a dressing-gown. It had occurred to her that she would thus be able to have another glimpse of Virgilio this evening. Horacio went out the way he was, the lighted lamp in his hand, clad in the voluminous nightshirt that came all the way to his feet, with the funny little flowers down the front of it. Virgilio was already in the drawing-room with Maneca Dantas when Horacio came in. Horacio at once recognized the third person present—he was Firmo, who had a grove near the forests of Sequeiro Grande, and he was obviously tired as he sat there in a chair with his mud-spattered boots and his face streaked with grime.

Hearing Ester's steps, Horacio said: “Bring us something to drink.”

She barely had time to note that Virgilio did not sleep in a nightgown as the other men did. He was clad in very fashionable pyjamas, and was smoking with beautiful self-assurance. Maneca Dantas took advantage of Ester's absence to draw on a pair of trousers over his nightshirt, but the effect was all the more comical, with the tail of the gown sticking out from behind. Firmo was explaining things to Horacio.

“The Badarós,” he was saying, “tried to have me done away with.”

Maneca cut a ridiculous figure in that get-up, with his anxious manner, but the question that he now asked revealed a profound knowledge of the
capangas
employed by the Badarós.

“And how does it come that you are still alive?”

Horacio also was waiting for an answer to this question, and Virgilio was eyeing him: the colonel with his wrinkled forehead looked enormous in that funny nightgown.

“The Negro,” said Firmo, “became frightened and missed his aim.”

“But are you sure it was one of the Badarós' men?” Horacio wanted to be certain.

“It was Negro Damião.”

“And he missed?” Maneca's voice was full of incredulity.

“He missed. He must have been drinking. He came out and ran down the road like a crazy man. There was such a fine moon. I could see his black face.”

“Well, then,” said Maneca, speaking slowly, “you had better have them light some candles in the church. To escape a bullet of Negro Damião's is a miracle, and a big one I should say.”

They were all silent as Ester came in with the rum bottle and the glasses. She served them, and Firmo gulped his drink down at once and asked for another, which he consumed with equal promptitude. Virgilio was admiring the back of Ester's neck, where the furrow showed white beneath her loosened hair as she bent over to serve Maneca. He watched Horacio as the latter stood there in the act of taking a glass from his wife's hand. He felt a desire to laugh, the colonel was so ridiculous; he was like a circus clown in that embroidered nightgown of his, with his pock-marked face. At the table he had been a timid fellow who had failed to understand the major part of what Virgilio and Ester were saying. He had been more comic than anything else, and the young attorney had felt himself the master of this woman whom chance had stranded there in an environment that was not her own; despite his gigantic frame, the cacao-planter had given an impression of weakness; he was a person of no importance, incapable of proving an obstacle to the plans already forming in Virgilio's mind. It was Firmo's voice that brought the lawyer back to reality and the present scene.

“That's why you see me drinking like this. I might be lying there stretched out in the road.”

Ester shuddered, the bottle trembling in her hand. Virgilio, also, was now suddenly a part of the scene. There before him was a man who had just escaped death. It was the first time he had come into direct contact with one of these occurrences of which his friends had spoken to him in Bahia as he was preparing to leave for Ilhéos. Even so, he did not quite grasp the significance of it. He assumed that Horacio's wrinkled forehead and the anxious look on Maneca Dantas's face merely reflected their emotions at seeing a man who had almost been assassinated. During the relatively short time that he had been in the cacao country he had heard much talk of such things, but he had not as yet encountered anything concrete. The row at Tabocas between Horacio's men and those from the Badaró estate had occurred while he was back in Bahia on a vacation. When he returned, there was still much gossip, but he had had his doubts about a number of things. He had heard people speak of the forest of Sequeiro Grande, had heard it said that both Horacio and the Badarós coveted the woods in question, but he never had attached any particular importance to it all. Moreover, the Horacio whom he now beheld, in that outlandish sleeping-garment, was a clown, a comic figure serving to round out the impression formed of him at the dinner table and later in the drawing-room. If it had not been for Firmo's manner, the drama of the situation would have been lost on Virgilio. He was, accordingly, surprised when Horacio turned to Maneca Dantas and said:

“There's nothing else to be done. They're asking for it; we're going to let them have it.”

That firm and energetic voice was something Virgilio had not expected. It was out of keeping with his previous impression of the colonel. In response to his questioning glance Horacio went on to explain how matters stood.

“We'll be needing you very much, doctor. When I asked Seabra to send me down a good attorney, I already could see that this was going to happen. We're the under-dog in politics down here, we can't depend on the courts, and so what we need is someone who knows the law. I don't have confidence in Doctor Ruy anymore; he's a drunkard, and he's quarrelled with everybody, even with the judge and the notaries. He makes a good speech, but that's all he's good for. What we need down here is an attorney with a head on him.”

The frankness with which Horacio spoke of attorneys and their profession and of courts of justice, his strong words masked by a certain air of contempt, was a fresh shock to Virgilio. His picture of the colonel as an amusing dull-witted clown was spoiled for him.

“But what is it all about?” he asked.

The men formed a strange group standing there, all of them, around Firmo, whose clothes were wet with rain and who was still panting from his hard ride: Horacio, enormous in his white nightgown; Virgilio, smoking nervously; Maneca Dantas, pale-faced and unaware of the shirt-tail sticking out of his trousers. Ester, who had sat down, had eyes only for Virgilio. She, too, was pale, for she knew that the struggle for the possession of Sequeiro Grande was about to begin. More important than this fact, however, was Virgilio's presence, the new pulse-beat of her heart, the inner happiness of a kind she had never known before.

“Let's sit down,” said Horacio as Virgilio put his question.

There was in his voice a note of authority that was also new, as if an order of his admitted of no discussion. Virgilio now recalled the Horacio of whom they gossiped in Tabocas and in Ilhéos: his many killings; the old wives' tale of the Devil in a bottle. He now found himself wavering between two images: one, that of a strong and powerful man, a lord and master; the other, of an ignorant and unprepossessing clown who was a very weak creature indeed. From his chair Horacio spoke, and the image of the clown disappeared.

“This is what it's all about,” he began. “This forest of Sequeiro Grande is good cacao land, the best in the country. No one yet has gone into it to do any planting. The only person who lives there is a crazy man who works cures. On this side of the forest is my property, and I've already bit off a chunk of it. On the other side is the Badaró plantation, and they've done the same. But very little on either side. That forest means everything, doctor. Whoever gets it will be the richest man around Ilhéos. He will also be master, at the same time, of Tabocas, of Ferradas, of trains and ships.”

The others were drinking in his words, Maneca Dantas nodding his head. Virgilio was beginning to grasp it. Firmo had recovered from his fright.

“Here on this side of the forest, between my place and the Badarós', is friend Maneca and his plantation. Farther up is Teodoro das Baraúnas. But there are only the two big estates. The rest are small groves, like Firmo's, a score of them or so. And all of them nibbling at the forest, without the courage to go in. For a long time I've planned to cut down the Sequeiro Grande. The Badarós know it very well. They're butting in because they mean to—”

He stared straight in front of him. The last words he had spoken sounded as though they presaged an irremediable disaster.

“They're riding high in politics,” explained Maneca Dantas. “That's why they dare—”

There was one thing that Virgilio wanted to know.

“But what has Firmo to do with all this?”

“His grove,” said Horacio, “happens to lie between the forest and the Badarós' property. They tried to buy it of him some time ago, even offered him more than it was worth. But Firmo is my friend; he's been a political follower of mine for many years; and so he consulted me about it, and I advised him not to sell. I knew what a temptation it was to the Badarós to set foot in that woods, but I never dreamed they would try to have Firmo put out of the way. That means they've made up their minds. Well, they're asking for it.”

His voice held a threat, and the other men lowered their gaze. Horacio laughed that ingrowing laugh of his. Virgilio saw him now as a giant of inconceivable strength. At the sound of his imperious tones the funny flowers in his nightgown vanished. The colonel made a gesture and Ester served another round of rum.

“Do you think, doctor,” he said, “that Seabra is going to win the election?”

“I am certain of it.”

“That's good—I believe you.” He spoke as if he had taken a definite resolve, as was apparent when he rose and went over to Firmo.

“What do you say?” he inquired of the latter. “And you, my friend,” turning to Maneca Dantas. “Do you think there's any grove-owner on the edge of the forest who won't be with me?”

Firmo was the first to speak.

“They will all be with you.”

Maneca felt called upon to qualify that statement.