The Violent Land (3 page)

A few handkerchiefs waved, but from one face alone tears were streaming, the young face of a woman whose bosom heaved with sobs. Bahia's new pier was not in existence then and the water came up almost into the street. The weeping girl waved her handkerchief, also, but among those on board who waved in return, the one to whom her heart belonged was no longer to be distinguished. The boat had begun to pick up speed, and those who had come down to see it off were leaving now. An elderly gentleman took the young woman's arm and led her away, murmuring words of consolation and of hope. The ship was lost in the distance.

During the first minutes of the voyage the various groups on board were mingled in confusion, after which the women began retiring to their cabins, while the men stood watching the ship's paddles as they churned the sea, for in those days the boats that ran between Bahia and Ilhéos were of the paddle type, as if instead of going forth to conquer the great open sea where the south wind held sway, they had merely to navigate some fresh-water stream.

The wind blew up more strongly and bore toward the night that lay over Bahia fragments of the conversation of those on deck, words uttered in an emphatic tone of voice: land, money, cacao, death.

As the houses dropped from sight, João twirled the ring on his finger, seeking to avoid the gaze of the dark-skinned man who was wiping his eyes and saying, as if in explanation of the entire scene: “She's consumptive, poor girl. The doctor says there's no hope.”

João stared at the sea, dark green in colour, and it was only then that he remembered why it was that he was fleeing the city. The engineer's ring fitted his finger perfectly. “Might have been made to order,” he murmured to himself.

He smiled as he recalled the engineer. An easy mark. He had never seen such an easy mark. The fellow did not understand the first thing about poker, but had let himself be taken, even to his ring. That very night a week before, João had cleaned them all, taking from Colonel Juvencio alone a conto, a thousand milreis. Was he to blame for it? He had been well enough off as he was, stretched out half naked on Violeta's bed, with the young woman singing to him in that frail little voice of hers and running her fingers through his hair, when Tabaris's boy had put in an appearance, saying that he had been all over town looking for the captain.

Rodolfo always contrived to get him a seat in a game. When a table was not full, he would say to the players: “Are you gentlemen acquainted with Captain João Magalhães—a retired captain?” There was invariably one who knew him and who had played with him before.

“He's not a sharper, is he?” the others would ask; and Rodolfo would wax indignant.

“The captain,” he would say, “plays a straight game. He plays well, I grant you that. But what I mean by a straight game is the kind of game the captain plays.” He would lie with the most cynical face in the world, and then would conclude: “A table without the captain is no table at all.”

In return for this rigmarole Rodolfo had his commission; and he knew, further, that the table where João Magalhães sat was one where the drinks would flow and the house's kitty would be no light matter. And so he had sent the boy for João as he prepared the decks.

That was the way it had been that night. João had been taking his ease, Violeta's fingers in his hair and her voice all but lulling him to sleep, when the boy had come. He had thrown on his clothes and a moment later was ensconced in the back room of the casino. From Colonel Juvencio he had taken one conto, and from the engineer all that the latter had in his pocket, even to his university ring, which the chap had tossed on the table when he found that he held four queens in his hand, on João Magalhães's deal. He lost, for the reason that the captain's four was a four of kings. The fourth player alone, a merchant from the Lower Town, was also lucky; he won two hundred–odd milreis.

At the table where João played, the fourth man always won; this was a part of his technique. And inasmuch as the captain (so his intimates asserted) had an exquisite flair for such matters, he would always pick the winner by the colour of his eyes, eyes which most nearly resembled a pair that had stared him out of countenance in Rio as they studied the professional's face with repulsion and contempt.

It was morning when they all rose from the table; and Rodolfo had valued the ring as being worth more than a conto. The engineer had bet three hundred and twenty on his four queens. João laughed to himself, there on the ship's deck. “Only a fool would stay on queens.”

He had gone to Violeta's house feeling thoroughly fit and thinking how happy she would be the next day when he brought her that blue silk dress that she had seen in a shop window. Who would have thought that the engineer, instead of keeping his mouth shut, would go to the police with a cock-and-bull story? What he had said about João had been plenty. He had wanted to know in what army the captain had held his commission; and if the police had not called João in for a little talk, was not that possibly due to the fact that they had been unable to find him?

Rodolfo had hidden him away and had made a good job of it; Agrippino Doca had told him marvels of Ilhéos and the cacao country; and now here he was on board this ship, after eight months spent in Bahia, bound for Ilhéos, where the cacao grew, and with it swift-made fortunes, the engineer's ring upon his finger, a deck of cards in one pocket, a hundred professional cards in the other:

CAPT. DR. JOÃO MAGALHÃES
Military Engineer

Little by little the sadness he felt at having to abandon the city he had so loved during those eight months was disappearing, and João began to take an interest in the view: a distant glimpse of trees and of houses growing smaller all the while. The ship's whistle blew and water splashed his straw hat. Removing it from his head, he ran his perfumed handkerchief over the crown and stuck it under his arm.

Then he smoothed down his tousled hair, which was left purposely uncared for and wavy. Darting an eye about the deck, he let his glance roam from the dark-skinned man whose gaze was still fixed upon the quay, no longer visible now, to the fat colonel, who was telling the travelling salesman of feats of daring in the semi-barbarous São Jorge dos Ilhéos country. As he twirled the ring on his finger, João studied the physiognomies of his fellow passengers. Would he be able to find the players for a little game? True, he had a comfortable amount of swag in his purse, but money never did anyone any harm. He whistled softly to himself.

Aboard ship the conversation was becoming general. João Magalhães had the feeling that it would not be long before he was drawn into it, and he was thinking of how to get up his poker party. Taking out a cigarette and striking a light, he strolled up and down the deck. Then once more he became interested in the view, for the boat was now drawing near to land as it crossed the bar of the harbour. From in front of a mournful-looking mud hut a couple of naked urchins with enormous bellies shouted at the passing ship. From another house a young girl with a pretty face, half hidden by the window, was waving an adieu. João reflected that this must be intended either for the ship's stoker or for all on board, but he took it upon himself to respond to it, extending his thin hand in a cordial gesture.

The fat colonel was astonishing the travelling salesman with the account of a row that had occurred in a house of prostitution in Bahia. Some young rowdies were making fools of themselves and had tried to get the better of him over a little mulatto girl. All that he had had to do was to draw his six-shooter.

“Come on, you! I'm from Ilhéos, I am!”

And the rascals had slunk away.

The travelling salesman was astounded by the courage that the colonel had displayed.

“That's what I call a man,” he said, “a real he-man!”

Captain João Magalhães strolled slowly up to them.

Leaving her stateroom, Margot crossed the ship from one end to the other. Twirling her fluffy parasol and catching up the ample train of her dress, she permitted herself to be admired, by the travelling salesmen, who made lewd remarks as she passed, by the plantation-owners, who stared at her open-eyed, and even by those third-class passengers who were on their way to look for work in the regions of southern Bahia. Begging pardon in a voice that was little above a whisper, she made her way through the various groups, and over each group a silence fell as she drew near, in order that they might be able the better to see and to desire her.

Once she had passed, however, the conversation came back to the one eternal theme: cacao. The salesmen would laugh as they watched Margot and the planters. They well knew that what she was looking for was money, easy money, and that it would cost these rude fellows a pretty penny before they were through with her. But they did not laugh when Juca Badaró emerged from the shadows, took Margot by the arm, and led her over to the rail, where they might have a view of Itaparica as it dropped from sight, and of the distant mass of dwellings that formed the city of Bahia. Night, meanwhile, was falling rapidly as the ship splashed onward through the water.

“Where are you from?” And Juca Badaró let his tiny eyes run over her woman's body, to come to rest on her thighs and bosom. Lifting his hand to her buttocks, he caressed them, feeling the firmness of the flesh.

Margot assumed an offended pose. “But I don't know you. What do you mean by taking such liberties with me?”

Juca Badaró took her chin in his hand and raised her blond head, his eyes looking straight into hers.

“Don't forget,” he said, measuring his words, “that you are going to hear much of Juca Badaró. And remember, you are mine from now on. See that you behave yourself, for I'm a man who means what he says.”

Then, abruptly dropping her chin, he turned on his heels and made his way to the stern of the ship, where the third-class passengers were crowded about and whence came the melodic strains of harmonica and guitar.

The moon had begun its climb in the heavens, an enormous red moon that left a bloody wake on the darkness of the sea. Antonio Victor drew up his long legs and rested his chin on his knees. The song which the back-countryman beside him was singing was lost in the immensity of the ocean, and it filled Antonio's heart with longing. It brought back to memory those moonlit nights in the little town where he had lived, nights when the lamps were not lighted, nights when he and so many other lads, and so many lasses as well, would go to fish from the bridge, bathed in moonlight. Those were nights of story-telling and of laughter, the fishing being little more than a pretext, with a clasp of hands as the moon hid itself behind a cloud.

Ivone was always beside him. She was a girl of fifteen, but already at work in the factory, the spinning-mill. She was the man of the family, supporting her sick mother and her four small brothers, ever since the night when her father had slipped away. No one knew where he had gone; that was the last that was heard of him. Ivone had had to go to work in the factory in order to feed all those mouths, and these nights on the bridge were her only diversion. She would recline her head with its dark hair on Antonio's shoulder and would give him her ripe, full lips to kiss each time a cloud came over the moon.

As for himself, he with his two brothers cultivated a millet plot on the outskirts of the city; but the income was small, and there was said to be much highly paid work in the lands to the south, where there was a fortune to be made in cacao. And so it was that one day, like Ivone's father, like his own older brother, like thousands of others, he had left the little town in his native province of Sergipe and had embarked at Aracajú. He had slept for two nights in a cheap waterfront hotel in Bahia, and then had taken third-class passage in a boat bound for Ilhéos.

He was a tall, lean
caboclo,
with protruding muscles and big calloused hands. He was twenty years old, and his heart was filled with sadness. A sensation he had never known before now took possession of him. Did it come, perhaps, from that big red moon, almost the colour of blood? Or from the back-countryman's mournful melody? The men and women, jostling one another on the deck, were speaking of their hopes, hopes bound up with those southern lands.

“I'm headed for Tabocas,” said one man who was no longer young, with a scraggly beard and kinky hair. “They tell me it's the coming place.”

“But they say it's a wild one, too, with all the killing that goes on, God forgive me.” It was a little fellow with a hoarse voice who spoke.

“I've heard tell of that, but I don't believe a word of it. You hear all kinds of things.”

“That is as God may will.” This from an old woman with a shawl about her head.

“I'm going to Ferradas,” announced a young lad. “I have a brother there who's doing very well. He's with Colonel Horacio, a man of money. I'm going to stay with him. He has a job for me. And then I'll come back to get Zilda.”

“Your sweetheart?” a woman wanted to know.

“My wife. We have a little girl two years old and another on the way. A pretty little kid.”

“You'll never come back,” said an old man wrapped in a cape. “You'll never come back, for Ferradas is the ass-hole of the world. Do you know what it means to work on Colonel Horacio's plantation? Are you going to be a worker or a cut-throat? The colonel has no use for any man who's not a killer. You'll never come back.” And the old fellow spat fiercely.

Antonio Victor heard this conversation, but the music that came from the other group, the lilt of harmonica and guitar, carried him back once more to the Estancia bridge, where the moon is lovely and life is at peace. Ivone had always begged him not to go. The millet plot would be enough for the two of them. Why was he so eager to go seek for money in a place of which they told such ugly tales? It was on those moonlit nights, with the stars filling the sky, so many of them and so dazzingly beautiful, feet dangling in the water of the river, that he had planned his departure for the Ilhéos country.

Men had written back, men who had gone there, saying that money was easy to get, saying, also, that it was easy to get hold of a piece of land and plant it with a tree called cacao, one that bore a golden-coloured fruit worth more than gold itself. The land was there waiting for those who would come and take it; it belonged to no one as yet. It would be his who should have the courage to plunge into the wilderness, clear the forest, plant cacao, millet, and manihot, and live for a few years on meal and wild game until the cacao began to bear fruit. Then there would be riches, more money than a man could spend, a house in the city, cigars, fine leather boots.

From time to time, on the other hand, there would come word of someone who had died from a bullet or a snake-bite, who had been stabbed in a row in town or shot and killed from ambush. But what was a mere life when so much wealth was to be had? In Antonio Victor's home town, life had been poverty-stricken and had held no hope for the future. The men, almost all of them, would leave, few to return. But those who did come back—for a brief visit, always—came back unreconciled to the life there after all the years of absence. For they came back rich, with rings on their fingers, gold watches, pearls in their neckties. They spent money right and left, threw it away on presents for their relatives, gifts for the churches and their patron saints, and donations for the feast-days at the end of the year. “He's come back rich,” was all that you would hear about town. And every man who had come back only to leave again because he could no longer accustom himself to the tranquil life of the place was one more invitation to Antonio Victor. Ivone was the only thing that held him there. Her lips, the warmth of her breasts, the entreaty of her voice, her pleading eyes. But one day he had broken with it all and had gone away, leaving Ivone sobbing on the bridge where they had said good-bye.

“I'll be a rich man in a year,” he had promised her, “and then I'll come for you.”

The moon of Estancia was over the ship now, but it was no longer the golden moon that had bathed the lovers on the bridge. This was a red moon, and there was an old man who said that no one ever came back from the land of cacao.

Antonio Victor had a feeling he had never experienced before. Could it be fear? Could it be homesickness? He himself did not know what it was. That moon brought back Ivone's lips, pleading with him not to go away; her eyes, filled with tears that night they had said good-bye. There had been no moon that night; there had been no one on the bridge fishing. It had been dark, with the river murmuring down below, as she met him there, her body warm-glowing, her face wet with tears.

“You have made up your mind to go?” There was a long minute of silence, a gloomy silence. “You will never come back.”

“I swear I will.”

She had shaken her head by way of negation; and then, afterwards, she had lain down on the river bank and had called to him. She had let him possess her without saying a word, without so much as a moan. When it was over, she had lowered her calico dress, its faded flowers stained now with blood, had covered her face with her hand, and had said to him in a broken voice:

“You will never come back. Another would have had me one of these days, and it is better that it be you. That way you will know how much I care for you.”

“I swear I'll come back.”

“You will never come back.”

Despite the pleasure that her body gave him, he was deeply moved at having possessed her in this manner and by the thought that he was leaving a child behind him. He told himself that he was going to make money for her and for the child, and that he would be back within a year. Land was easily had in Ilhéos; he would plant cacao, would harvest the fruit, and then would come back for Ivone and the young one. True, her father had not returned and no one knew where he was. And here was an old man saying that no one ever came back from that country, not even a man with a wife and two children. Why didn't that harmonica stop playing? The music was so sad. And what was the meaning of that moon, that blood-red moon above the sea?