The Violent Land (29 page)

The fracases that began that night were not to stop until the forest of Sequeiro Grande had been transformed into cacao groves. The people of the region from Palestina to Ihéos, and even those of Itapira, were later to reckon time with reference to this struggle.

“That happened before the fracases of Sequeiro Grande.”

“That was after the struggle for Sequeiro Grande had ended.”

It was the last great struggle in connection with the conquest of the land, and the most ferocious of them all. For this reason it has remained a living reality down the years, the stories concerning it passing from mouth to mouth, from father to son, from the old men to the young. And at the fairs in the towns and cities blind musicians sing of these gun-frays which once upon a time drenched with blood the black land of cacao:

It was a sorcerers' curse,

On a night when witches rode. . . .

For the blind are the poets and chroniclers of this country. They it is who, strumming on their guitars, keep alive with their wheedling voices the traditions of the region. And the crowd at the fairs—men come to sell their flour, their millet, their bananas, and their oranges, and those who have come to buy—all gather around these blind bards to listen to the stories of the time when cacao was in its infancy and the century likewise was young. They will toss small coins into the cups at the beggars' feet as the guitar-strings moan and a quavering voice sings of those long-past fatal affrays of Sequeiro Grande:

Never was seen so much shooting,

So many dead in the street. . . .

Men will squat on the ground, a smile on their faces, while others lean on their staffs to listen attentively to the blind man's tale. The verses are accompanied by the music of the guitar; and as the song goes on, there arise before these men of the present the men of another day, who cleared the jungle and felled the forest as they killed and died and planted cacao. Many who took part in the clashes of Sequeiro Grande are living still, and some of them figure in the verses that the blind men sing; but the hearers never think of associating the planters of today with the
conquistadores
of yesterday. It is as if the latter were beings of another world, so greatly have times changed. Where before was the forest, locked in the mystery of its century-old trunks, today stand open cacao groves with their fruit the colour of gold. The blind men go on singing, and their stories are terrifying ones:

I am going to tell you a tale

Will make your blood run cold. . . .

A tale to make your blood run cold—the tale of the forest of Sequeiro Grande. On the very night that the brothers Merenda and Horacio's three
cabras
attacked Sinhô Badaró on the side-road, that same night Juca set out at the head of a dozen men and committed a series of outrages in the neighbourhood. They began by slaying the two Merenda brothers in the sight of their mother, so it was said, as an object-lesson. Then they went on to Firmo's grove, where they set fire to his manihot plantation; if they did not kill Firmo himself, it was because he happened to be in Tabocas.

“That's twice he's got away,” said Juca. “He won't get away the third time.”

After that they proceeded to Braz's place; but here there was a fight, for Braz and his men put up a resistance and Juca was compelled to retire, leaving one of his lads behind, while it was not known how many had fallen on the other side. One thing was certain: it was Antonio Victor who had brought the man down, for Juca had seen the fellow tumble. Antonio asserted that he had got another one, but they were not sure of this.

A score of years later the blind singers visiting the fairs in the new towns of Pirangy and Guaracy, which had sprung up on the site of the forest of Sequeiro Grande, would narrate the details of the feud:

It was a pity, it was a shame,

So many the folks that died;

Horacio's men and the Badarós, too,

On the ground lay side by side.

Oh, it was enough to break your heart,

All the killing that was done,

And all the folks that lost their lives

Each day from sun to sun.

The men of the old days, it appeared, had gone around drumming up those
jagunços
who were known for the sureness of their firing-aim and whose courage had been tested. It was said that Horacio had sent into the backlands for famous “bad men,” and that the Badarós were unstinting of money when it came to paying a rifleman who was a dead shot. The nights were filled with fear, with mystery, and with surprises. Whatever road one might take, however long and roundabout, was not a safe one for travellers. Even those who had nothing whatsoever to do with the forest of Sequeiro Grande, with Horacio or with the Badarós, did not dare to venture along those highways of the cacao country without being accompanied by at least one
cabra,
one professional killer. The hardware merchants, who also dealt in weapons, grew rich in those days. All of them, that is to say, except Azevedo in Tabocas, who bankrupted himself furnishing repeating-rifles to the Badarós. If he had been able to save anything out of the ruins of his business, it was owing to his political dexterity. Later he kept a small shop in Ilhéos, and he, too, in his poverty-stricken old age, would tell stories of the same sort to the young students of the city.

They threw away scythe and ax,

Slung the rifle over their backs. . . .

The weapon-dealer, he got rich,

For they bought guns by the stacks,

Indeed, I think, when all is told,

Well-nigh a million must have been sold.

So sang the blind beggars a score of years afterwards, as they told of the deeds and courage of the Badarós, of Sinhô and of Juca:

Sinhô was a mighty fellow;

Leader of the Badarós was he. . . .

One time he finished off five men,

All alone, so they tell me.

And Juca, he was also brave;

His courage was known to all;

He was not afraid of any man,

Either great or small.

But they also sang of the courage of Horacio and his followers, and especially of Braz, the bravest of them all, who, though three times wounded, kept on fighting and killed two men:

Braz, by name Brasilino

José dos Santos, in full,

Even as he lay dying.

On the ground, the trigger did pull;

For of fighting he'd not had his fill,

And though wounded, he knew how to kill!

They also gave a picture of Horacio on his plantation, giving orders to his men and sending them out along the roads that surrounded the forest of Sequeiro Grande:

Horacio gave the orders,

For he was the master there,

And his cabras rode down the highway,

Bringing death with them everywhere. . . .

But the popular ballads inspired by the struggle of Sequeiro Grande not only etched in the figures and pictured the exploits of the protagonists; they also touched on the troubled lives that people in those days led. For instance:

A married woman did not exist,

“Unless in Bahia it be.” . . .

For down this way they would insist:

“One married woman like any other

—Even though she be a grandmother—

Tomorrow's widow is she.”

The men at the fairs as they listened to all this, a score of years later, in towns that had been reared upon the site where the forest of Sequeiro Grande once had stood, would give vent to exclamations of amazement, laugh heartily, and comment on the narrative in short, sharp sentences. Thanks to the blind man's voice, that entire year and a half of struggle had passed before them, with men slaying, dying, and fertilizing the earth with their blood. And when the blind beggar had ended his song:

And now I have truly told you a tale

To make your blood run cold!

they would toss a few more coins into his cup and go off muttering to themselves: “It was sorcery, that is what it was.” For that was what the ballad said, and that was what the men of today said as well. It was sorcery, on a night when witches rode. The curse of black Jeremias had been laid upon the land in those days, being carried from plantation to plantation by the voice of Negro Damião, a lean and filthy figure of a man, a harmless half-wit who wandered, weeping and wailing, down the highways and the by-ways of the cacao country.

The excited gossip over the attempt on Sinhô Badaró's life, from ambush, and the death of the Merenda brothers had not yet died down when Ilhéos was stirred by the incident in the café between Lawyer Virgilio and Juca Badaró. For the matter of that, events this year and a half followed one another with such rapidity that Dona Yayá Moura, the old maid who took care of one altar in the Church of St. Sebastian, was led to complain to her friend Dona Lenita Silva, who had charge of the opposite one.

“So many things are happening, Lenita,” she said, “that we really don't have time to discuss them the way we should. Everything moves so fast.”

The truth was that both Horacio and the Badarós were anxious to have it over with. Each of them wanted to fell the forest and start setting out cacao trees as soon as possible. The struggle was running into money; the
jagunços
had to be paid by the day and the Saturday payrolls were unprecedentedly high, while the cost of weapons was going up. For this reason neither the Badarós nor Horacio cared to waste any time; and so it was these months were so laden with events worth gossiping about that the good Church ladies actually lost count of them; they had not yet done talking of one when another would come along to claim their attention.

The same was true of the newspapers. Manuel de Oliveira would be writing an article tearing Horacio to shreds over some depredation when word would reach him of another much more important one. The violence of
O Comercio
and
A Folha de Ilhéos
knew no bounds this year. There were no insulting adjectives that were not hurled; and it was a red-letter day in the editorial room of
O Comercio
when Lawyer Genaro received his copy of the big Portuguese dictionary that he had ordered from Rio because the book-stores in Bahia did not carry it. This was a work published in Lisbon and specializing in sixteenth-century terms; and it was then that
O Comercio,
to the delight of the admiring citizenry, began alluding to Horacio and his friends as “knaves,” “coxcombs,” “varlets,” “villains,” “filibusterers,” and the like.
A Folha de Ilhéos
replied by falling back on the national argot, on which Lawyer Ruy was an authority.

As for the court suit Horacio had filed, it continued to drag along, with no end in sight. “Pending in the courts” was the most inadequate of judicial expressions where a lawsuit by the opposition against those of the government party was concerned, as was the case in this instance. The judge was there to protect the interests of the Badarós, and if he did not make a good job of it, the least that was likely to happen to him was to be transferred by the Governor of the state to some little town in the backlands where there were no modern conveniences and where he would be absolutely lost and forgotten by everybody, with nothing to do but vegetate year after year. On the other hand, the bench of Ilhéos was a stepping-stone to the state supreme court, where one might exchange the title of judge for that of justice, a more sonorous one and much better paid. And so it was in vain that Lawyer Virgilio and Lawyer Ruy bombarded the court with petitions, applications, requests for a writ of inquiry, and so on. As Horacio put it, things were going “at a snail's pace” so far as the suit was concerned. He did not have much faith in legal measures himself, but relied rather on taking the land by force; and here he saw to it that, in contrast to the court proceedings, no time should be lost. The Badarós, likewise, wanted as much speed as possible. An election was due to be held the following year, and many people were saying that a break between the state and federal governments was almost certain, over the question of the presidential succession. Should the state government fall, the Badarós would then find themselves in the opposition, in which case there was no counting on the judge—Horacio's case would then do something more than “pend.”

All this was the subject of much talk in the wine-shops, on the street corners, and in the homes of Ilhéos, and even on the boats that lay anchored in the harbour, among the stevedores and the sailors. And in distant cities, in Aracajú and in Victoria, in Maceió and in Recife, people discussed the affrays in Ilhéos just as they did those of the famous Padre Cicero in Joazeiro do Ceará.

Virgilio had gone to Bahia and had secured from a justice who was a supporter of the opposition a court ruling favourable to Horacio in the matter of the rights to the Sequeiro Grande tract. This had been added to the other documents in the case, and Lawyer Genaro had had to cudgel his brains over the law-books in an effort to “quash the ruling” and soothe the feelings of the judge, who was terrified by this intervention of a supreme court justice in a case still in its initial stage. However, what undoubtedly provoked Juca Badaró more than anything else, more than the obtaining of this writ, was the series of articles that Virgilio had written for the opposition paper in Bahia regarding the Ilhéos disorders. The Badarós were not in the least concerned with what
A Folha de Ilhéos
printed, but these articles in a daily paper published in the capital had repercussions outside the state; and though the government dailies had defended Sinhô Badaró, the Governor himself had let it be understood that it would be well to avoid publicity having to do with “such incidents” at a moment when the state government was not on the best of terms with the federal authorities. Horacio had learned of this, and Virgilio had walked the streets of Ilhéos like a conqueror.

One night he went to the café. He had not been there for a long time; his nights were spent in Ester's arms, mad, delirious nights of love; for Ester's flesh had been awakened to the delights of sensuality, and she was being educated in the refinements he had learned with Margot. But tonight Horacio was in Ilhéos, and Virgilio had no place to go. He had grown accustomed by this time to being out of an evening and so decided to drop in at the café for a whisky. He was accompanied by Maneca Dantas, who had come to town with Horacio. It was Virgilio who extended the invitation.

“Shall we step over to the café?” he suggested.

Maneca laughed. “Do you want to lead the father of a family off the straight and narrow path, doctor? I have a wife and child; you know I don't go to places like that,” he jestingly remarked.

They both laughed and went up the stairs. In the back room Juca Badaró was playing cards with Captain João Magalhães and other friends. Nhôzinho informed the newcomers that “it was a terrible game, with an ante the highest he had ever seen.” Virgilio and Maneca went on into the dance hall, where the pianist and violinist were playing the current melodies. Seating themselves, they ordered a whisky, and Virgilio then noted that Margot was at a table with Manuel de Oliveira and other friends of the Badarós. The journalist nodded to the lawyer, for he never quarrelled with anyone; he was, he maintained, “a professional newspaper man; what he wrote in the paper was the Badarós' opinion and had nothing to do with his own private one—they were two distinct things.” Virgilio replied to his nod, exchanging greetings with the others as well. Margot smiled at him; he looked handsome tonight, she thought to herself, and, as she remembered other nights, her lips parted in an initial gesture of desire. Nhôzinho came in with a bottle of whisky.

“This is good stuff—Scotch—I only serve it to a few select customers. It's not for everybody.”

“What's the proportion of water?” asked Maneca, who was still in a bantering mood.

Nhôzinho swore that he was incapable of mixing his whisky—above all, one like this, a real whisky—and he blew a resounding kiss from the tips of his fingers by way of indicating how good it was. Then he inquired why it was that Virgilio had not been around for some time. He had missed him.

“Busy, Nhôzinho, busy!” Such was his brief summary of his motives for staying away.

Nhôzinho retired, but Manuel de Oliviera, who had caught sight of the whisky bottle, came over to ask Virgilio for news of another newspaper man, a friend of both of them, who was working on the opposition daily in Bahia.

“Did you see Andrade when you were up there, doctor?” he asked, after having shaken hands with Virgilio and Maneca Dantas.

“We had dinner together once.”

“And how is he?”

“Oh, the same as ever. Drinking from the moment he wakes up until he goes to bed. The same old habits. He's amazing!”

“Does he still write his articles while he's drunk?” Manuel de Oliveira was becoming reminiscent.

“He's staggering all the time.”

Maneca ordered another glass and served the journalist. Thanking him for his kindness, Manuel continued:

“He's a colleague of mine, colonel. The best writer in Bahia—an all-around newspaper man. But he drinks something terrible. The minute he opens his eyes, before brushing his teeth, he has his little ‘snifter' as he calls it, a glass of rum. At the office nobody ever saw him when he could stand perfectly straight. But he has a head on him, colonel, always keeps his wits about him. Can write on any topic—a brilliant fellow.” With this he drained his glass and changed the subject: “Good whisky.”

He accepted another drink and with his full glass took his leave and went back to his own table. Before doing so, he turned to Virgilio.

“There is a lady friend of yours over at our table who sends you her greetings,” and they both glanced in Margot's direction. “She says she would enjoy a waltz with you.” And as he walked away, he added with a wink: “Once a king, you know, it's always Your Majesty.”

Virgilio laughed at this. At bottom he was wholly uninterested. He had come to the café for a drink and a chat, not to go chasing after a woman, much less one who was at present Juca Badaró's mistress, being kept by him. Moreover, he was afraid that Margot, to whom he had not spoken since the night of their quarrel, would begin her recriminations again. He was not interested in her, so why dance with her? Why renew an attachment that had been severed? He shrugged his shoulders and took a drink of whisky. Maneca Dantas, on the other hand, was quite concerned with the episode. He would enjoy having the people in the café see Virgilio dancing with Margot. That way everyone would know that she was still infatuated with the young attorney and that she had only gone with Juca because Virgilio had left her. They would no longer be able to say that Juca had stolen her from her former lover.

“The young lady can't take her eyes off you, doctor,” said Maneca.

Virgilio glanced around and Margot smiled, her eyes fixed on him.

“Why don't you have one dance with her?”

But Virgilio was still thinking: “It's not worth the trouble.” He moved back in his chair and Margot at the other table thought that he was coming for her and rose to her feet. This obliged him to make up his mind. There was nothing else to do but dance. It was a dreamy waltz, and as the two of them went out on the floor, everybody watched them and the prostitutes began gossiping. At the table where Margot had been sitting, a man started to rise from his seat; there appeared to be a discussion going on between him and Manuel de Oliveira. The journalist was trying to convince him of something; but the man, after listening to him, brushed Oliveira's hand off and went out into the gaming-room.

The pianist was pounding out the slow-dragging waltz on his ancient instrument, and Virgilio and Margot were dancing without saying a word to each other, but her eyes were closed, her lips parted. At this moment Juca Badaró came in from the back room, followed by the man who had summoned him and by João Magalhães and the other players. From the doorway between the two rooms Juca stood gazing at the couple, his hands in his pockets, his eyes sparkling dangerously. As the music died down and the dancers clapped their hands for an encore, he darted across the room, seized Margot by her arm, and dragged her back to the table. She struggled a little, and Virgilio stepped forward. He was about to say something, but Margot stopped him.

“Please don't get into this.”

He stood for a moment undecided, eyeing Juca, who waited expectantly. Then he remembered Ester. What did Margot mean to him?

“Thank you, Margot,” he said with a smile to his ex-mistress, and returned to his own table, where Maneca Dantas was standing, revolver in hand, anticipating a row.

Juca and Margot, meanwhile, back at their table, were quarrelling in a loud voice, so that all could hear. Manuel de Oliveria tried to interfere, but Juca gave him one look and the newspaper man decided it was better to keep still. The argument between the pair was growing heated. She wished to get up from her chair, but he pushed her back violently. At the other tables there was a complete silence, even the piano-player being engaged in watching the scene. Juca whirled on the musician.

“Why the hell don't you play that God-damned piano!” he shouted, and the old fellow threw himself on the keyboard, and the couples once again went out on the floor. Juca at once took Margot by the hand, forcing her to come with him. As they passed the table where Virgilio and Maneca sat, Juca turned to the girl, whom he was almost dragging.

“I'll teach you to respect a real man, you filthy whore. This must be the first time you ever lived with one.”

This was said for Virgilio's benefit; and he, losing his head for the moment, was on the point of rising from the table, but Maneca Dantas held him back, for he knew that the lawyer would die at Juca's hands if he so much as made a move. Juca and Margot went on down the stairs, and from inside the room they could hear the slaps that he was giving her. Virgilio was pale, but Maneca kept insisting that it was not worth while getting involved.

That was as far as the incident itself went, and by the next day Virgilio had entirely forgotten about it. He no longer gave it a thought, for Margot did not interest him. It was of her own free will that she had gone to live with Juca Badaró. His plan had been to send her back to Bahia with enough money to live on for a few months; but she had preferred to go with Juca the very night they had broken with each other; she had become Juca's mistress and had given to the Badarós' paper the details concerning her former lover's student life. She now had Juca, and if she could not dance with whom she pleased, that was her fault; he, Virgilio, had nothing to do with it.