The Violent Land (19 page)

He came with a great retinue, a score of horses, and a burro train to carry the luggage. They were on their way to Tabocas, where the following day Ester was to take the train for Ilhéos. She was mounted after the fashion of the time, on a side-saddle with silver mountings, and she carried a silver-headed riding-whip in her hand. At her side rode Virgilio on a mottled-grey horse. Behind them, at Horacio's side, his low, squat figure weighing heavily on his mount, his face marked by a long knife-scar, came their friend Braz, owner of a grove at the edge of the Sequeiro Grande forest and respected throughout the cacao region. He carried a repeating-rifle on the saddle in front of him, and his hand that held the reins rested on it. Bringing up the rear were a number of plantation lads and pack-drivers, rifles on their shoulders, revolvers in their belts, and, last of all, Maneca Dantas.

Maneca had failed in his mission to Colonel Teodoro Martins, owner of the Baraúnas plantation; the latter was siding with the Badarós.

They came riding in a closely compact group, raising a cloud of red dust in the road. With pack-drivers shouting at their beasts of burden and all the other noise and stir, one might have thought that this was a small detachment of an army invading the town. They came in at a gallop; and at the head of the street Horacio rode up to the front, his horse pawing the earth as the colonel drew up sharply before the house of Farhat, the Syrian, where they were to spend the night. The pawing steed, rearing on his hind legs and lifting his rider from the saddle, as the latter, whip in hand, reined him in—all this gave the effect of an equestrian statue of some ancient warrior. The plantation lads and the pack-drivers now scattered out through the town, which was agog with excitement. There was little sleep in Ferradas that night. It was like a bivouac before the morrow's battle.

With their long whips cracking on the ground, the pack-drivers made their way through the mud-laden streets of Tabocas as they shouted at their beasts to keep them from wandering off along the side-lanes and down the newly opened thoroughfares.

“Hey! Diamante! Dianho! Get up, there! Straight ahead, you damned burro, you!”

Leading the procession, with tinkling bells and showy breast-trappings, came the burro that best knew the road, the “little mother of the troop.” The colonels made a point of decking out these “little mothers” as an emblem of their wealth and power.

“Whoa, Piranha! Get up, Borboleta! The Devil's in that mule—”

And so their long whips would crack in the air and on the ground as the animals with their sure, slow pace stirred up the mud of the street. From a doorway some acquaintance would call out the most overworked gibe that the town knew:

“How goes it, wife of a donkey-driver?”

“I'm on my way to see your mother right now.”

Now and then herds of lowing oxen would come in from the backlands and would either remain in Tabocas to be sold for slaughter or continue on to Ilhéos. The leather-clad cowboys would then dismount from their high-mettled ponies and would mingle with the donkey-drivers as they drank rum in the taverns or went to the houses of prostitution in search of a woman's caress. Horsemen with revolvers in their belts would from time to time gallop through the town, and children playing in the mire would scamper for safety. A thousand times a day that mire was stirred up as cacao and still more cacao was brought in to be deposited in the enormous warehouses. That was the kind of town Tabocas was.

It had had no name at first, consisting as it did of four or five houses on the bank of the river. Afterwards it became the town of Tabocas as more houses were built, one after another, and streets without any sort of symmetry were opened by the hoofs of burros bringing in the dried cacao. A railway branch line had been extended to the village from Ilhéos, and this led to the building of still more houses. Nor were these houses, like those in Ferradas, Palestina, and Mutuns, mere unpainted huts of beaten clay with wooden planks for windows, flimsy structures thrown up in haste and serving rather as shelters than as dwellings. In Tabocas there were brick houses and houses of stone and plaster with tiled roofs and glass windows, while a part of the main street had been paved with cobblestones.

The other streets, it is true, were mudholes pure and simple, daily churned by the pack-trains that came in from the entire region round about, bearing hundred-pound bags of the precious crop to be stored in numerous warehouses that had been constructed. A number of export firms already had branches in Tabocas, where they bought cacao directly from the planters; and if a branch of the Bank of Brazil had not as yet been installed, there was at least a banking representative who spared many of the colonels the trouble of a train trip to Ilhéos to deposit or withdraw their money. In the middle of a large grass-planted square the Church of St. Joseph, patron saint of the region, had been erected, while almost directly opposite, in one of the few two-story buildings that the town boasted, was the Masonic Lodge, which numbered among its members the majority of the plantation-owners and which gave balls and maintained a school.

Houses were also springing up on the other side of the river, and already there was talk of building a bridge to connect the two portions of the “city”; for the one thing upon which the inhabitants of Tabocas strenuously insisted was that their village be elevated to the rank of a city and become the seat of government and of the administration of justice, with a prefect of its own, a judge, a prosecutor, and a police deputy. A name had even been suggested for the new municipality: Itabuna, which in the Guarani Indian tongue means “black rock,” allusion being to the big rocks that stood on the banks and in the middle of the river, upon which the washerwomen spent the day at their labours. But inasmuch as Tabocas lay within Horacio's bailiwick, he being the largest landowner in the vicinity, the government of the state had paid no heed to the inhabitants' appeal. The Badarós asserted that it was all a plot on Horacio's part to seize political control of the region. Accordingly, Tabocas continued to be a borough of the municipality of São Jorge dos Ilhéos. Nevertheless, many of the residents, in writing letters, referred to it not as Tabocas, but as Itabuna. And when one of them who happened to be in Ilhéos was asked where his home was, he would reply, in a tone of great pride: “I am from the city of Itabuna.”

There was, as a matter of fact, a police officer in Tabocas, who represented the highest authority in the town—nominally, that is, for the supreme authority was in reality Horacio. This officer, a former army corporal, was a small, lean fellow, but a nervy one, and had managed to hold on to his job in spite of all the threats of Horacio's ruffians. He was clever, too, being careful not to abuse his authority; he never interfered in a row unless there was serious bloodshed or someone had been killed. Horacio got along well enough with him, and had even, more than once, backed the corporal against his own
jagunços
. Whenever the colonel came to Tabocas, Corporal Esmeraldo always went around to have a little chat with him, and at such times he never failed to bring up the subject of a possible reconciliation with the Badarós. Horacio would laugh that ingrowing laugh of his and would clap the corporal on the shoulder:

“You're a straight-spoken fellow, Esmeraldo. Why you keep on working for the Badarós is more than I can understand. But any time you need a friend, I'm at your service.”

Esmeraldo, however, had a deep veneration for Sinhô Badaró, a feeling that dated back to the days when they had roamed the forest together, here in this land of cacao. In these parts it was said that Sinhô's men were loyal to him out of friendship, and that anyone who went to work for him never left him; he was not like Horacio, a man to betray his friends.

In Tabocas whoever was a friend and political follower of Horacio's was careful to maintain an attitude of hostility toward the Badarós and their henchmen. Invariably at election time there were rows, gun-fights, and killings; and Horacio always won and always lost, for the votes were fraudulently counted in Ilhéos. They voted the living and the dead, and many of the former cast their ballots under threat from Horacio's ruffians. Tabocas in those days was full of
jagunços,
who stood guard over the homes of the local bigwigs: that of Dr. Jessé, who was Horacio's perpetual candidate; that of Leopoldo Azevedo, leader of the government party; that of Dr. Pedro Matta; and now that of Lawyer Virgilio, the new attorney, as well. Each party had its own apothecary's shop, and no patient who voted for the Badarós would think of patronizing Dr. Jessé, but went to Dr. Pedro instead. The two physicians continued to maintain personal relations, but said terrible things about each other when their backs were turned. Dr. Pedro alleged that Dr. Jessé neglected his patients, being a good deal more concerned with politics and with his cacao grove. Dr. Jessé on the other hand asserted, and the population bore him out, that Dr. Pedro had no respect for women, and that no husband or father of a family was safe in trusting his wife or daughter to him for an examination. There was likewise a dentist for each faction. In brief, the entire town was thus divided, with the two parties exchanging gross insults in the newspapers of Ilhéos. Horacio, now, had already sent for a printing press, with the object of starting a weekly in Tabocas, which Lawyer Virgilio was to edit.

The attorneys of the town were numerous, six or seven of them, and all earned their living out of the scandalous “ousters”; for this form of “legal” process flourished here even more than it did in Ilhéos. Men who for years had owned land and plantations would lose them overnight, thanks to a well-drawn “ouster.” There was not a colonel who would do business without first consulting his lawyer, by way of assuring himself against the possibility of a future eviction of this sort.

There was a Negro in Tabocas, one Claudionor by name, who raised his two or three thousand pounds of cacao, and who once worked an “ouster” of a little different sort that made him famous—he was even mentioned in the Bahia papers. The victim was Colonel Misael, whose fortune even in that day was a matter of legend. A cacao-planter who raised many thousands of pounds, he was at the same time a banker in Ilhéos and a stockholder in the railroad and in the docks; he was, in short, a power to be reckoned with economically, and he had a son-in-law who was a lawyer. In spite of all this, however, the Negro Claudionor got the better of him. In the seclusion of his own little plantation Claudionor had thought the thing out, and Lawyer Ruy helped him to carry it through.

Appearing one day before Colonel Misael, Claudionor asked him for the loan of seventy
contos de reis
with which to buy a grove. Swearing roundly, Misael advanced him the money on a short-term loan: six months in which to pay; for the colonel had a plan of his own, which was to take Claudionor's plantation when the latter failed to meet his obligation. Being illiterate, the Negro signed his name with a mark to the promissory note. Then, on his way home, he stopped off at Tabocas and contracted for the services of a primary-school teacher. Taking the latter with him, he set himself to learn to read and to sign his name. Six months later, when the note fell due, Claudionor denied that he owed the money; he had never had any loan from Misael; it was all a trick on the colonel's part. The best proof of this, so his attorney, Lawyer Ruy, argued, was that Claudionor could read perfectly well and was able to sign his name. Colonel Misael accordingly lost the seventy
contos de reis
and Claudionor increased his own holding and was able to make an extra contribution at the feast of St. Joseph that year.

The truth of the matter was, it could not properly be said that there were only six or seven lawyers in the town, for that number merely included those who resided there. But those who lived in Ilhéos also practiced in Tabocas, while those in Tabocas had clients in the city. It was only a ride of three hours and a half by train, and one day it would be no more than forty-five minutes, when, as the region grew more prosperous, the new graded road-bed should have been constructed.

And so, amid “ousters,” political struggles, intrigues, holy days of the Church, and Masonic festivals, Tabocas continued to live its life—a town that had not even had a name, and which now thought of calling itself Itabuna. Many a time was the blood of men slain in brawls mingled with the mire of its streets, to be churned under by the slow-paced burros. There were even occasions when Dr. Jessé, upon arriving with his instrument-case, would be unable to locate the wound on account of the mud with which the victim's body was covered. Even so, the fame of Tabocas was widespread; men spoke of it in the remote backland regions, and a certain newspaper in Bahia had referred to it as a “centre of civilization and progress.”

Raising her hand, Margot pointed to the bit of street that was visible through the open window, by which she meant to indicate the entire town of Tabocas.

“This is the most out-of-the-way place in the world. It's a cemetery.”

As Virgilio drew her to him, she poutingly left her chair and came over to seat herself upon his knees.

“You're a bad little girl.”

Angrily she bounded to her feet.

“That's what you always say—I'm always the one that's to blame. You knew what this place was like before you came down here. I remember Juvenal's telling you that you ought to go to Rio if you wanted to make a name for yourself. I don't know why you chose to come here instead.”

Virgilio opened his mouth as if about to speak, then stopped, deciding that it was not worth while. Had it been the month before, he undoubtedly would have spent an enormous amount of time in explaining to Margot that his future lay here, that if the opposition party won the election—and everything pointed that way—he would be the candidate for deputy from this region, the most prosperous in the state of Bahia. He would have tried to explain that the road to Rio was much more easily travelled by the highways of the cacao country than by a coastwise voyage in a seagoing liner. Tabocas was the land of money; within a few months' time he had made more there than he would have made in years of practice in the capital.

He had explained all this to her more than once; but Margot was always longing for the festivals, cafés, and theatres of Bahia. In a way he understood the sacrifice she was making. It had all begun when he was in his fourth year in school. He had made Margot's acquaintance in a house of assignation, had slept with her a few times, and she had soon become smitten with him. And when he had been on the verge of abandoning his studies, owing to the death of his father, who had left the family affairs in bad shape, she had offered him everything she possessed and in addition her earnings each night. He had been deeply touched by this; and after one of the political leaders had found him a place in the party office and on the staff of the opposition newspaper, he had kept up his relations with Margot for her own sake alone; he had formed the habit of paying her room rent, had slept with her every night, and they had even gone to the theatre together. The only thing was he had not lived with her openly, for this would have created a scandal that might have had a bad effect upon his career. But nevertheless it was in Margot's room that he, Juvenal, and other classmates had planned the student campaign that was to make him class orator, and it was at her side that he had written his baccalaureate address.

When upon the advice of the opposition leader he had accepted the post of attorney for the party at Tabocas, Virgilio had spent hours in endeavouring to convince Margot that she should come with him. She had been unwilling, had not wished to leave the merrymakings and all the life and movement of Bahia. She had always thought that upon graduation he would go to Rio de Janeiro, and Virgilio himself had thought the same in his student days. The party chieftains, however, had succeeded in convincing him that, if he wanted a career, he ought to spend a few years in the new cacao country. He accordingly had gone there, in spite of Margot's declaration that all was over between them. It had been a painful night, that last one in the American House. She had wept and clung to him and had accused him of abandoning her—he did not love her anymore. The truth was that Margot was afraid.

“You'll go down there and marry some rich backwoods girl and leave me stuck off in the bushes. I'm not going.”

“You don't love me. If you did, you'd come.”

He had possessed her amid all the anguished quarrelling of that night, which they had thought would be their last together. They had refined upon their love-making, each being desirous of preserving a cherished memory of the other.

He had come down alone; but only a few weeks had gone by when she unexpectedly put in an appearance, scandalizing Ilhéos with her gowns, which were in the latest fashion, with her broad-brimmed hats and painted face. The night of her arrival the streets of the town were filled with amorous sighs. She had gone with him to Tabocas and at first had behaved well enough. She seemed to have forgotten the gay and brilliant life of Bahia; she even gave evidence of becoming a housewife by caring for his clothes and superintending the preparation of meals in the kitchen. She was, in short, wholly devoted to him. She now paid a little less attention to her toilet, let her hair fall to her shoulders, and even failed to complain about the lack of hairdressers capable of fashioning those complicated structures which she formerly had worn upon her head.

Again they lived apart in order to avoid offending local prejudices. After all, he was the legal representative of a political party; he had his responsibilities. And so Margot lived in a pretty little cottage with a girl who was being kept by a merchant of the town. There Virgilio spent a great part of the day. At times, in case of emergency, he would even receive his clients there. He ate there, slept there, and it was there that he drew up his briefs for the cases that he had to try in the court of Ilhéos.

Margot appeared to be happy; her ultra-fashionable gowns were forgotten in the wardrobe, and she no longer spoke of Bahia. But she was little by little growing tired of it all, as she came to realize that the time she would have to spend here was longer than she had thought. Moreover, Virgilio as a rule avoided taking her to Ilhéos on his repeated trips, in order not to arouse malicious gossip. When she did go, it was in another train, and in the city she saw little of him. But worst of all, she had caught a glimpse of him once or twice engaged in conversation with marriageable young women, the daughters of wealthy planters. At such times Margot would bring the roof down with her screams; it was no use Virgilio's telling her that he had to do this in order to further his career; she was unimpressed by such arguments. They would then have a passionate quarrel, with Margot throwing up to him the sacrifice she was making for his sake, stuck off there as she was in the sticks when she might be in Bahia living on the fat of the land; for surely there must be some rich business man or politican who had already made a success in life, and who would be only too glad to set her up in a little place of her own. Many had asked her already, but she had left everything to come running after him. She was a fool, that was what she was.

“Cléo was right when she said I shouldn't come down here—that this was the way it would be.”

These quarrels always ended with the opening of a bottle of champagne and with the sound of kisses in a night of delirious love-making. But Margot would find herself left each time with an ever greater longing for the merry life of Bahia, strengthened by the certainty that Virgilio would never leave this country. For one reason or another their quarrels grew more frequent, coming every few days now as she began complaining about the lack of dressmakers and similar inconveniences: she was losing what hair she had, she was getting fat, and she had forgotten how to dance, it had been so long since she had had an opportunity.

But this afternoon things were more serious. When he had announced that he was going to Ilhéos for a couple of weeks or more, she had been very happy about it. Say what you might, Ilhéos was a city; she would be able to dance in Nhôzinho's café, and there were a few women there with whom it was possible to hold a conversation—they were not like these filthy whores in Tabocas, most of whom came from the groves, having been deflowered by the colonels or their overseers, after which they had fallen in with the life of the town. Even the woman with whom she lived, the merchant's mistress, was a mulatto girl who could not read, with a pretty figure and an idiotic laugh; a planter's son had been her downfall, and the merchant had then taken her out of the rua do Poço, which was the street where the women of easy virtue lived. In Ilhéos there were girls who had been to Bahia and Recife and even to Rio, and with them one could talk about clothes and ways of doing one's hair. It was not strange, then, if she was overjoyed when Virgilio had spoken of a stay in Ilhéos. Running up to him, she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him time and again on the mouth.

“How nice! How nice!”

But her happiness was of short duration, as he informed her that he could not take her with him. Before he had a chance to explain, she had burst out weeping and sobbing.

“You're ashamed of me!” she screamed. “Or else you've got somebody else in Ilhéos. You're quite capable of taking up with some brazen hussy. But I'm telling you, I'll scratch her eyes out, I'll make such a scandal that all the world will know about it. You don't know what I'm like when I'm angry.”

Virgilio let her scream. When her tears and sobs had at last subsided, he began explaining, in a voice that he strove to make as caressing as possible, why it was that he could not take her. He was going on business, important business, and there would be no time for him to look after her. Surely she knew of the ugly situation between Horacio and the Badarós over the forest of Sequeiro Grande? She nodded her head; yes, she knew. But she could not see that that was any reason for his leaving her behind. As for his not having time to spend with her, that did not matter. He would not have to work all night long, and at night she could go to the café with him while they were in Ilhéos.

Virgilio was still seeking for arguments. He sensed that there was a reason for her attitude; the note of distrust that had crept into her voice, her vague accusations with regard to another woman, the half-angry, half-frightened look that she gave him—all of these signs were not lost upon him. If he was not taking her with him on this trip, it was not because he was going to be occupied solely with Horacio's affairs; he was also planning to have some time for Ester. For he was unable to put Ester out of his mind. He could still hear, day and night, that murmured plea for help, while her husband was on the veranda:

“Take me away from here—far, far away.”

Virgilio knew that if Margot were in Ilhéos, it would not be long before she heard some bit of malevolent gossip, and then his life would be a hell; for she was capable of making a scandal that might involve Ester. Ester and Margot: he could not think of the two of them together; their names were not to be uttered in the same breath. The one had been the sweetheart of his wild student days. The other was the love that he had found among the forests, the love that comes one day and is stronger than the world. No, he did not want Margot with him, his mind was made up as to that. But he did not wish to hurt her, for he could not hurt a woman. Like a despairing man, he sought for some argument that would clinch the matter; and he believed that he had found it when he told Margot that if he did not want to leave her alone during the day in Ilhéos it was because he was jealous; Machadão's house, where she always put up, was the one most frequented by the wealthiest of the colonels. Yes, that was the reason that he was not taking her: he was jealous. As he said this, he endeavoured to put into his voice all the conviction that he could muster. Margot now was smiling through her tears, and he felt that he had won. He hoped that the matter was settled as she came over and seated herself in his lap.

“So you're jealous of your little girl?” she said. “Why? You know very well that I never pay attention to any propositions that are made to me. If I let myself be stuck away out here, it is for your sake. What reason, then, would I have for deceiving you?” Kissing him again, she went on: “Take me with you, honey; I swear I won't put my foot out the door except to go with you to the café. I won't leave my room; I won't talk to any man. While you're busy, I'll spend the day shut up in my room.”

Virgilio felt himself weakening. He decided to change his tactics.

“I don't know what you find so terrible about Tabocas that you can't spend ten days here without my company. You only want to be in Ilhéos.”

It was then that she rose and pointed to the street. “It's a cemetery.”

With this she began talking once more about what a mistake it was, his sacrificing his own future and her life like this. Again Virgilio thought of attempting an explanation; but he realized that it was of no use, that his affair with Margot had come to an end. Ever since he had known Ester he had had eyes for no other woman. Even in bed with Margot he was not the lover of old, sensual and passionately desirous of her body. Already he looked upon her charms with a certain indifference: the rounded thighs, the virgin breasts, all the little tricks that she knew by way of rendering the hour of love more pleasurable. His bosom was filled with desire, but it was desire of Ester; he wanted her, the whole of her: her thoughts, her body, her heart—everything. That was why it was he had remained open-mouthed, as if about to say something. Margot waited, and when he did not speak but merely raised a hand, as much as to say it was not worth the effort, she returned to the charge.

“You treat me like a slave, taking yourself off to Ilhéos and leaving me here. And now you come around with this story about being jealous. It's all a lie. I'm the one that's being made a fool of. But I'm not going to be one any longer. The next time anyone wants to take me to Ilhéos or Bahia, I'm going to clear out.”

Virgilio was losing his temper. “So far as I'm concerned, my dear, you can go ahead. Do you think I'm going to die of a broken heart?”

She was furious. “Oh, what a fool I am! And with all the men there are running after me. Juca Badaró is just waiting for me to say the word. And here I am, making a fool of myself over you, while all you think about is traipsing off to Ilhéos. You've got some rich girl that you're marrying for her money. I'm sure of that.”

Virgilio rose from his chair, his eyes flaring with anger. “Shut your mouth!”

“I won't shut my mouth! It must be true, all the same. You're out to pull the wool over some country girl's eyes and get your fingers on her money.”