The Violent Land (12 page)

At the edge of the forest Negro Damião was waiting for a man in ambush. In the light of the moon he was seeing hallucinatory visions, and he was suffering. At the edge of another forest, in the drawing-room of the Big House, Dr. Virgilio was putting his knowledge of the law at the service of the two colonels and their ambition and was discovering love in Ester's frightened eyes. Beside the forest that ran down the slope of the hill on the other side, on the Badarós' Sant' Ana da Alegria Plantation, Antonio Victor also was waiting, his feet dangling in the river water. The stream at this point was a small one, and its calm, clear waters were strewn with a mixture of fallen leaves from the cacao trees on the one side and those trees which stood on the opposite bank, huge trees that the hand of man had not planted. These waters formed the boundary between the forest and the groves, and Antonio Victor, as he waited, was thinking that it would not be long before fire and ax would have laid low this wood. It would soon be all cacao groves, and the river would no longer mark any separation. Juca Badaró was talking of felling the forest this very year, and workmen were getting ready to burn it over; the cacao saplings that were to fill the space now occupied by the wood were already being prepared.

Antonio Victor was fond of the forest. His home town of Estancia, so distant now even in his thoughts, was situated within a wood, with two rivers encircling it, and the trees overran its streets and public squares. He was better accustomed to the forest, where all the hours were hours of twilight, than he was to the cacao groves, glowing so brightly with their ripened fruit the colour of old gold. He had formed the habit of coming here during his first days on the plantation, when his work in the groves was ended. Here it was that he took his rest. Here it was that he remembered Estancia, still present in his recollections, and recalled Ivone, whom he had left behind on the bridge over the Piauhitinga River. It was here that he suffered the gentle pangs of melancholy.

It had been hard for him at first. In addition to the gnawing pain of homesickness, the work was heavy, a great deal heavier than it had been on the little millet plot that he had cultivated with his brothers before coming to these lands in the south. Here on the plantation they rose at four o'clock in the morning to prepare the dried beef and manihot flour for their noonday lunch; and then, after gulping down a pot of coffee, they had to be at the grove, gathering cacao, by five, just as the sun had barely begun to appear above the hill at the back of the Big House. Then it began beating down on the bare backs of Antonio Victor and the other workers, especially those who had come down with him from Bahia and were not used to it. Their feet would sink into the mire, the viscous molten cacao would stick to them, and then from time to time there would come a rain that would leave them in even a sorrier plight than they had been before, for, having been blown in over the tufted groves, it brought with it bits of brushwood, insects, and filth of all sorts. At midday—they could tell it by the sun—work would stop, and after eating their lunch they would shake down a soft breadfruit from some breadfruit tree for their dessert. But the foreman astride his burro would already be shouting to them to take up their scythes again; and they would begin once more and keep it up until six o'clock in the evening, at which time the sun abandoned the groves.

After that came night, mournful and filled with weariness, without a woman with whom to stay, without Ivone to caress on a nonexistent bridge, without the fishing parties such as they had in Estancia. People talked about the money to be made in the south. Heaps upon heaps of money. But here all that they got for all this work was two and a half milreis a day, to be wholly spent at the plantation store, a miserable wage at the end of the month when accounts were settled. Night came, bringing with it far-off longings, and thoughts as well; and Antonio Victor would come down to the edge of the forest, to dip his feet in the river, shut his eyes, and give himself over to his memories. The others would remain in the mud huts, having flung themselves down on the wooden bunks to sleep the sleep of utter exhaustion. Others would sing
tiranas,
love-songs filled with longing, and the guitars would moan as the airs of other lands were sung, bringing memories of a world left behind. It was enough to tear one's heart out.

Antonio Victor would then come down to the forest, his memories accompanying him. Once again, for the hundredth time, he would possess Ivone on the Estancia bridge. Yet when it was over, there would remain the same soft and viscous cacao caught on the soles of his feet and growing greater in bulk all the time, like some weird kind of shoe.

After that, Juca Badaró had taken a liking to him. First of all because, when they were engaged in felling the wood where the Border Line Grove now stood, he had not been afraid as the others were when they arrived there at night in the midst of a storm. It was, in fact, he, Antonio Victor, who had chopped down the first tree. Now that place was the Border Line Grove, where the cacao saplings were beginning to turn into trunks and were already near to their first flowering. And then later, in that row at Tabocas, Antonio Victor had brought down a man—his first one—in order to save Juca's life. It was true he had wept much and despairingly upon his return to the plantation; it was true that for night after night he had seen that man as he fell, a hand to his bosom, his tongue lolling out. But that had passed also, and Juca had taken him out of the groves for the much pleasanter job of “
capanga
”—bodyguard and killer. He now accompanied Juca Badaró when the latter went out to pay off his men, and on the trips he was constantly making to the nearby towns and to the city; he had exchanged the scythe for the rifle. He knew the prostitutes in Tabocas, Ferradas, Palestina, and Ilhéos; he had had an ugly disease and a bullet in his shoulder. Ivone was now a vague and distant shadow, Estancia a memory that was all but lost. But he kept up his custom of coming down at night to the edge of the forest, to dangle his feet in the river.

And to wait there for Raimunda. She would come for pails of water, for Don' Ana Badaró's bedtime bath. She would come down singing; but no sooner did she catch sight of Antonio Victor than her song stopped, her face growing hard as a look of abhorrence came over it. She would give a surly reply to his greeting, and the one time he had tried to take her and press her to him, she had pushed him into the river; for she was as strong and resolute as a man. But, for all that, he did not stop coming down there every night; only he never again tried to take advantage of her. He would say good evening and receive her grumbling response as she went on humming the air she had been singing on the way down. She would fill her kerosene can with water at the river's brink, and he would help her put it on her head. And Raimunda then would be lost among the cacao trees, with her great black feet, much blacker than her mulatto face, sinking into the mud of the trail. He would thereupon leap into the water, and then finally he would go back through the cacao grove to receive Juca Badaró's orders for the following day. Sometimes Don' Ana would send him out a glass of wine. Antonio Victor could hear Raimunda's steps in the kitchen, could hear her voice answering Don' Ana's call:

“I'm coming, godmother.”

For Raimunda was Don' Ana's godchild, although the two were of the same age. She had been born on the same day as Don' Ana, being the daughter of black Risoleta, the cook in the Big House, a pretty Negro girl with round hips and firm, hard flesh. Nobody knew who Raimunda's father was, seeing that she had been born a light-skinned mulatto with hair that was almost straight; but there were many who whispered that it was none other than old Marcelino Badaró, the father of Sinhô and Juca. These whisperings, however, were no reason why Dona Filomena should send her cook packing. On the contrary, it was Risoleta who suckled at her big black breasts the “little darling” who had just been born, the aged Badarós' first grandchild. Don' Ana and Raimunda had grown up together in their early years, one on each of Risoleta's arms, one at each of her breasts. On the day that Don' Ana was baptized, the little mulatto girl, Raimunda, was baptized also. It was black Risoleta herself who picked the godparents: Sinhô, who was then a lad of a little more than twenty; and Don' Ana, who was only a few months old. The priest had made no protest; for even then the Badarós were a power before which the law and religion alike bent the knee.

Raimunda had grown up in the Big House, for she was Don' Ana's “milk sister.” And since Don' Ana had come unexpectedly to enliven the household as the grandparents were nearing old age, and thirty years after the last little Badaró girl had beguiled them with her childish ways, the entire family put themselves out to satisfy her every whim. And Raimunda got what was left over of this affection. Dona Filomena, who was a good, pious woman, was accustomed to say that, since Don' Ana had taken Raimunda's mother, the Badarós had to do something for the little mulatto girl. It was the truth: black Risoleta had eyes for only one thing in the world, and that was “her white daughter,” her “little darling,” her own Don' Ana. For this reason, when Don' Ana was small, Risoleta had even raised her voice against Marcelino when the elder Badaró was about to punish his lively and disobedient young granddaughter. She became a wild woman when she heard Don' Ana sobbing, and had come in from the kitchen with blazing eyes and wrathful face. Juca was then a small boy, and it was one of his favourite diversions to make his little niece cry so that he might witness Risoleta's outburst of fury. Risoleta had no respect for him; she called him the “demon,” and even went so far as to tell him that he was “worse than a Negro.”

“That youngster is a little pest,” she would say to the other women in the kitchen as she dried her tears.

For Don' Ana the kitchen was always a place of refuge. Whenever she had been naughtier than usual, she would flee there, to the skirts of her “black mammy,” and neither Dona Filomena nor the aged Marcelino nor even Sinhô would come to look for her; for on such occasions Risoleta would prepare herself as if for battle.

As for Raimunda, she performed little household tasks and learned to cook; but at the Big House they also taught her to sew and to embroider, taught her the ABC's and how to sign her name, and how to do simple sums in addition and subtraction. By this the Badarós believed that they were paying their debt.

Risoleta had died with Don' Ana's name on her lips, gazing at her foster-child, who gave her so much pleasure by being with her in her final hour. Old Marcelino Badaró was already dead and buried for two years; and the following year his daughter, who was married to a merchant in Bahia, had died there, not having been able to get used to the city and to living so far from the plantation. She had gone into a decline and had caught consumption. Dona Filomena had finally taken Raimunda out of the kitchen and had definitely assigned her to work in the Big House; and she always acted as the mulatto girl's protector as long as she lived. Later Sinhô's wife had also died of consumption, and there were left but her godparents, Sinhô and Don' Ana; but in any event Raimunda led a life that was much the same as that of the other “fillies” in the house: washing, mending clothes, going to the river for water, and making sweetmeats. The only difference was that at holiday time Don' Ana would make her a present of a new dress and Sinhô would give her a pair of shoes and a little money. She never asked for the latter; for of what use was money to her, seeing that she had everything, here in the Badarós' house? When Sinhô, at the feast of St. John and at Christmas time, gave her ten milreis, he would always say: “Put that away for your hope-chest.”

It never occurred to him that Raimunda might want for anything. But meanwhile, from her infancy, Raimunda's heart had been filled with unsatisfied desires. At first it was the dolls and toys that came from Bahia for Don' Ana and that she was forbidden to touch. How many drubbings had she had from black Risoleta for wanting to lay hands on the playthings that belonged to her “sister of the cradle”! Later it had been the desire to mount a well-harnessed horse like Don' Ana's and gallop away over the fields. And finally she desired to have, like Don' Ana, some of those things that were so pretty: a necklace, a pair of earrings, a Spanish comb for her hair. She had fallen heir to one of the last mentioned articles when she had found a comb in the dust-bin where Don' Ana had tossed it as useless, since all of its teeth save two or three were missing. In her little room at night, by the light of a lamp, she would stick the comb in her hair and smile at herself. This might be the first time that day that she had smiled; for Raimunda had a serious, cross-looking face, a surly face for everybody. Juca, who never let a woman go by him, whether it was a prostitute or a married woman in the city, the mulatto girls in the grove, or even the Negro women, none the less steered clear of Raimunda. Possibly it was because he found her ugly, with her pug nose that contrasted so sharply with the light skin of her face.

Yes, she was ill-tempered; Don' Ana herself had noticed it, and it was generally said about the plantation that she was “mean,” that she was not good-hearted. She appeared to care for no one, but lived her life in silence, doing as much work as four women and taking what was offered her with murmured thanks. Thus she had grown up into young womanhood. More than one had wanted to marry her, being certain that Sinhô Badaró would not fail to help out anyone who took his godchild, Don' Ana's “milk sister,” for a wife. The employee at the plantation store, a young simpleton who had come down from Bahia and who knew how to do sums and read books—he, too, had wanted her; but he was thin and weak and wore glasses, and Raimunda would not have him. She had wept when Sinhô had brought up the subject, saying that no, no, she could not. Sinhô had shrugged his shoulders to indicate that his interest in the matter was at an end.