The Violent Land (4 page)

The song is a sad one, like an omen of trouble to come. The wind, scurrying over the sea, snatches up the musical notes and scatters them, until it seems they will never die. Sadness comes with the music and lays hold of the third-class passengers, among them the pregnant woman who clings to Filomeno's arm. The strains of the harmonica serve as an accompaniment to the melody the young man is singing in a voice that is loud and strong. Antonio Victor draws his long legs closer still to his body as the picture of peaceful Estancia and of Ivone giving herself without a murmur mingles with the fresh images of a land as yet unconquered, a land of brawls and bullets and sudden death, of money and heaps of banknotes. One man who is travelling alone and who speaks to no one makes his way through the groups and stretches out on the deck. The moon leaves a reddish wake on the sea as the song tears at their hearts:

My love, I am leaving you now,

Nevermore to return.

Comes now a vision of other, distant lands and of other peoples, of other seas and other shores, or of a rustic backland country flayed by drought; and many of those on this little boat are leaving a love behind them. Some are going by very reason of that love, to find the wherewithal with which to win the loved one, to look for the gold that purchases happiness. That gold which grows in the land of Ilhéos, on the cacao tree. The song says they will never come back, that in those lands death awaits them from behind every tree. And the moon, the moon is red as the ship heaves and tosses on the ruffled waters.

The old man in the cape is bare-legged, with no shoes on his feet. His eyes are hard as he draws on the butt of a cigarette. Someone asks him for a light, and the old fellow gives a puff to revive the spark.

“Much obliged, Pop.”

“Don't mention it.”

“Looks like a storm coming up.”

“It's the season for the south wind. There are times when it blows so hard no boat can stand up against it.”

“Ceará is where they have the storms,” the woman puts in. “You'd think it was the end of the world.”

“So I've heard,” says the old man. “Yes, that's what they tell me.”

They had come up to a group that stood conversing about the men who were playing cards.

“Are you from Ilhéos?”

“I've been in Tabocas, going on five years now. I'm from the back-country.”

“And what are you doing down there at your age?”

“My son, Joaquim, went down there first. He was doing well for himself, had a little grove. The old lady died, and he sent for me.”

He fell silent then. It seemed that he was listening attentively to the music that the wind carried away to the city hidden in the night. The others waited expectantly, but only the murmur of voices from first-class and the song the Negro was singing came to break the silence.

Nevermore to return,

In those distant lands to die.

The song continued as the men shuddered from the cold. A swift and violent wind was blowing up from the south, and the ship was bouncing over the waves. Many of those aboard had never been on a boat before. They had crossed the inhospitable scrub forests of the backlands in a train made up of carload after carload of immigrants. The old man with his hard eyes looked them over.

“You hear that song? ‘In those distant lands to die.' That's the truth, that is. Whoever goes to that country never comes back. It's like a spell laid upon you; it's like a trap. I'm telling you, that folks—”

“But there's easy money there, ain't that right?” The young lad faced him with kindling eyes.

“Money—that's what gets 'em. Folks come, make a little money, for, bless the Lord, there
is
money there—but it's money that brings bad luck; it's money with a curse on it. It don't stay in anybody's palm. You plant a little cacao. . . . ”

The music now was low and hushed. The card-players had finished their hand. The old man looked the young one straight in the eyes, after darting a glance around at the others who were hanging on his words.

“Did you ever hear tell of an ‘ouster'?”

“I've heard it's some kind of monkey-business with a lawyer who takes the land away from other folks.”

“An attorney comes along with a colonel; they work an ‘ouster' and take away the cacao that folks have planted.” Once more he glanced about sharply, then spread out his big rough hands. “You see those hands? They've planted many a cacao tree. Me and Joaquim, we set out grove after grove; we worked like beavers, we did. And what did we get out of it?”

He was putting the question to them all—to the card-players, to the pregnant woman, to the young lad. Then he appeared to be listening to the music once more as he gazed at the distant moon.

“They say when the moon is the colour of blood like that there'll be trouble in the street that night. It was like that the night they murdered Joaquim. They had no reason for killing him; they did it out of pure wickedness.”

“But why did they kill him?” the woman insisted.

“Colonel Horacio and Lawyer Ruy worked an ouster; they took the cacao we had planted—claimed the land belonged to the colonel and that Joaquim had no right to it. Colonel Horacio came with his cut-throats and a bunch of certified records. They drove us off the land and even kept the cacao that was drying and about ready for market. Joaquim was a good lad, not afraid of hard work; but he was done for when they took the grove, and he started to drink. And one time when he was drunk he told people he was going to have revenge, that he was going to do away with the colonel. One of the colonel's
cabras
overheard him and told his boss, and they laid for Joaquim in ambush and killed him the next night, on the road to Ferradas.”

The old man fell silent and his listeners asked no further questions. The players returned to their game, the dealer threw down a couple of cards, and the others bet. The music was gradually dying away in the night. The wind was blowing harder and harder every minute. The old fellow took up his tale again.

“Joaquim,” he said, “was a law-abiding man; he would not have killed anybody. Colonel Horacio knew that very well, and his men did, too. Joaquim just said that because he'd been drinking; he wasn't going to kill anyone. He was a hard-working man; all he wanted was to earn a living. He felt bad because they'd taken the plantation, that's true. But if he hadn't been drinking, he'd never have said what he did. He wasn't a killer. They shot him in the back.”

“Were they arrested?”

Again the old man spat, contemptuously.

“The very night they killed him, they were drinking in a wine-shop, bragging about it.”

Silence fell on the group. “Seven,” said one of the players. But the winner did not even rake in his money, so absorbed was he in watching the old man, who stood there all bent over, seemingly oblivious of the world, alone with his sorrow.

“And you?” said the pregnant woman in a low voice.

“They shipped me off to Bahia, told me I couldn't stay there any longer. But I'm going back now.” The old fellow suddenly drew himself erect, his eyes once more took on the hard gleam they had lost as he finished his tale, and it was with a firm voice that he went on speaking:

“I'm going back now, going back for good. No one is going to drive me away. It's fate, woman, that decides what is going to happen to folks. No one is born good or bad; it's fate that twists us all crooked.”

“But—” The woman paused.

“Go ahead; say what you like.”

“But how are you going to live? You're not the age now to do hard work.”

“When people make up their minds to do something, woman, things always get straightened out somehow. And I've made up my mind. My son was a good lad; he wouldn't have killed the colonel. And neither would I soil these hands of mine with blood.” He put out his hands, calloused with the toil of earth. “But they killed my son.”

“So you—” began the woman, fear and trembling in her voice.

The old man turned his back on her and slowly walked away.

“He'd kill all right,” was the comment of a lean-looking individual.

The music once more grew in volume in the night as the moon swiftly climbed the heavens. The one who was dealing the cards nodded his head by way of confirming what the lean man had said. The pregnant woman grasped Filomeno's arm.

“I'm afraid—”

The music of the harmonica ceased. The moonlight was like a pool of blood.

José da Ribeira dominated the other group. He was speaking of things that had happened in the land of cacao; stories and more stories. Every other moment he would spit, happy at being in a position to do the talking and tell these people what he knew. They listened to him attentively, as to one who had something to teach them.

“I almost changed my mind about coming,” said one little woman with a suckling child at her bosom, “when they told me there was a fever going around down there that takes people off in a flash.”

José laughed as the others turned to him. His tone was a knowing one as he replied.

“They didn't tell you any lie,” he said. “No sirree, lady. I've seen many a man who was stronger than an ox come down with that fever. Three nights of it and he was done for.”

“Isn't it something like the smallpox?”

“There's a lot of that, too, but that's not what I'm talking about. There's smallpox, and chicken pox, and all kinds of pox, and then there's the black fever, which is worse than any of them. I never saw a man come out of the black fever alive. But that's not what I mean. This is a new kind of fever. Nobody knows what it is. It don't even have a name. It comes on you unexpectedly and takes you off in the blink of an eye.”

“Saints preserve us!” said another woman.

José spat as he went on with his reminiscences.

“There was a doctor came down there, with a diploma and everything. He was a young fellow, didn't even have a beard, and good-looking, too. He said he was going to put an end to the fever in Ferradas, but the fever put an end to him and to his good looks at the same time; for he was the ugliest corpse I ever saw, uglier even than Garangau, the one they stabbed to death at Macacos—they cut him all to pieces, gouged out his eyes, cut off his tongue, and stripped the hide from his chest.”

“Why did they do that, poor fellow?” said the woman with the child.

“Poor fellow?” José da Ribeira laughed, an ingrowing laugh; it appeared that he was enormously amused. “Poor fellow? As if there was ever a worse cut-throat in all the south country than Vicente Garangau. Why, in one day he did away with seven men from Juparana. He was as mean a man as God ever put breath into.”

The group was impressed, but a man from Ceará spoke up.

“Seven is a liar's count, friend José.”

José laughed once more and puffed on his cigarette; he was not offended.

“You're a child,” he said. “What do you know about life? You see me here, don't you, with the weight of fifty years on my shoulders? Well, I've covered a lot of ground; I've spent ten years in those woods. Before that I was a soldier in the army and saw plenty of trouble, but nothing in the world to compare with the kind of trouble you see there. Did you ever hear of an ambush?”

“Yes!” exclaimed one of the men; “they say it's where you lie in wait for someone and shoot the poor fellow from behind a tree.”

“Well, then, see here. I know a man who made a bet of ten milreis with a friend of his. He bet the man to be killed would come from one direction and his friend bet he would come from the other; and the first one who came along got the bullet that was to decide the bet. Did you ever hear of anything as cursed as that?”

The man from Ceará shuddered. One of the women could not believe her ears.

“And they did that just to win a bet?”

José da Ribeira spat once more as he went on to explain.

“I've been there, I've seen a lot of the world, I was a soldier and I've seen things to make your hair stand on end. But I've never seen anything like what you see there. They're real men, all right, but money is what talks. If you're quick on the trigger, you get along well enough.”

“And what do
you
do down there?”

“I was a police sergeant for a while; then I got me a little grove, which is better than being on the force, and I live on it. I've been up to Bahia for a vacation and to buy a few things I needed.”

“And you're coming back third-class, Pop?” said the man from Ceará, banteringly.

José smiled again, that ingrowing smile of his.

“The girls,” he confessed, “took all my money, son. The wildcat in the forest is what woman is in town. Whenever you see a white one in the capital, it seems to turn your head. They took me, cleaner than a whistle.”

No one had any comment to make on this, for at that moment a short man with a whip in his hand and a sombrero on his head had stopped in front of them. José turned and spoke to him respectfully.

“How are you, Mr. Juca?”

“How are you, Dad? How goes the plantation?”

“I've been away, going on a month. I aim to clear more woods this year, the Lord willing.”

Juca Badaró nodded his head, eyeing the group as he did so.

“You know these people, Dad?”

“I'm just getting acquainted with them, Mr. Juca. Is there any reason why you ask?”

Instead of replying, Juca made his way into the centre of the group.

“Where are you from?” he said to one of them.

“From Ceará, boss. From Crato.”

“What were you, a mule-driver?”

“No, sir, begging your pardon. I had a little farm.” And without waiting for the question: “The drought finished me.”

“Do you have a family or are you single?”

“I have a wife, and a kid on the way.”

“Do you want to work for me?”

“Yes, sir; thank you kindly.”

Thus Juca Badaró went about, hiring hands: the man who was dealing the cards, one of the other players, the man from Ceará, the young lad, and Antonio Victor, who was gazing up at the sky with its thousands of stars. Many offered their services and he refused them. He had had a wide experience with men and could readily tell which ones would do for his plantation, for felling the forest, working the land, and looking after the crops.