The Violent Land (28 page)

THE STRUGGLE

Whence came those strains of a guitar on this night without a moon? The song was a mournful one, a nostalgic melody that spoke of death. Sinhô Badaró ordinarily did not spend any time in reflection on the sad-sounding words and music of the airs that were sung by Negro, mulatto, and white workers here in the land of cacao; but tonight, jogging along on his black horse, he could feel the sadness laying hold of him; and for some reason, he could not have told you why, he thought of the figures in the picture on the parlour wall of the Big House. That music must be coming from a grove, from a house somewhere, hidden away among the cacao trees. It was a man's voice, and Sinhô wondered why the Negroes should spend a good part of the night strumming their guitars when the time that they had for sleeping was so short. Still that air accompanied him at every turn of the road, at times but a murmur and then suddenly swelling as if it were very near:

Mine is a hopeless life,

Working night and day. . . .

Behind him Sinhô Badaró could hear the hoofs of the burros ridden by his
capangas
. There were three of these men: the mulatto, Viriato; Telmo, a tall, skinny fellow with an effeminate voice, but a dead shot with a rifle; and Costinha, the one who had killed Colonel Jacinto. They were talking as they rode along, and fragments of their conversation were borne to Sinhô on the night breeze:

“The fellow put his hand on the door—there was a rumpus.”

“Did you shoot?”

“There wasn't time.”

“You always get in trouble when you get mixed up with a woman.”

Had Negro Damião been there, Sinhô would have called to him and had him come up and ride alongside him; he would have told him of some of his plans and the Negro would have listened in silence, nodding his enormous head in approval. But Damião now was a half-witted creature, wandering along the highways, laughing and crying like a child, and Sinhô had had a hard time in preventing Juca from having him put out of his misery. On one occasion, weeping and wailing, he had come near the plantation, and those who had seen him said that they would not have recognized him, he was so skinny and all covered with woolly hair, while his eyes were sunken in his head, as he went around muttering things about dead children and the white bellies of angels. He had been a good Negro, and to this day Sinhô Badaró could not understand how he had come to miss his aim that night he had fired on Firmo. Could he have been out of his mind even then? The song, reaching him once more at the bend of the road, brought back the memory of that afternoon, and Sinhô again recalled the picture on the parlour wall: the flute-playing shepherds and the countryside, the blue peace of the sky. It must have been a merry tune, with gentle words of love. A tune to dance by, for the lass had a foot in the air. Not a mournful tune such as the one that came to him now, which was more like a funeral chant:

My life is a burden and I am tired;

I came here and my feet were mired,

Shackled with cacao. . . .

Sinhô Badaró looked about him on both sides of the road. That song must be coming from some worker's hut in the vicinity. Or could it be someone going along the side-road, a guitar slung over his shoulder, and killing the tedium of his journey with music? For a quarter of an hour now the singer had been keeping up with Sinhô's party, lamenting the life that he was compelled to lead in this land, singing of toil and death and the fate of those who were caught in the cacao country. But accustomed as they were to the darkness of night, Sinhô's eyes could not make out any light in the vicinity. All that they encountered was another pair of eyes, belonging to an owl that was hooting ominously. Yes, it must be someone coming along the side-road; but if music was rendering his journey shorter, it was making Sinhô's homeward-bound one seem all the longer.

For these were dangerous roads, now that there was no longer any tranquility round about the forest of Sequeiro Grande. That afternoon when he had given orders for Negro Damião to do away with Firmo, he had still had hopes. But now it was too late. War had been declared, and Horacio was already going into the forest, was getting his men ready, and had filed suit in Ilhéos for possession of the land. On that afternoon, with the European shepherd lass doing her dance, Sinhô Badaró had had his hopes. Again that man's voice, singing. It surely must be someone approaching along the side-road, for the song was growing in volume and in mournfulness:

When I die,

They'll carry me in a swaying hammock.

Many hammocks would be going along the roads now; it was a scene that would be repeated on many nights. And blood would drip from those hammocks to sprinkle the earth. This was no land for rosy-cheeked shepherd lasses, rustic dances, and sky-blue backgrounds. This was a black land—but good for cacao-planting, the best in the world. The voice was coming closer still, singing its song of death:

When I die,

Bury me beside the road. . . .

There were many nameless crosses along the side of the road, marking the graves of men who had died from bullets or of fever—and from the thrust of a dagger, too—on nights of crime or when the plague was stalking the countryside. But still the cacao trees grew and bore fruit, and friend Maximiliano was saying that, on a day when all the forests should have been felled and the land planted, they would dictate their own price to the North American dealers. They would have more cacao than the English, and in New York Sinhô Badaró's name would be known as that of the proprietor of the cacao plantations of São Jorge dos Ilhéos. He would be richer than Misael. And Horacio would be left beside the road, while nameless crosses would mark the last resting place of Firmo and Braz, of Jarde and Zé da Ribeira.

They had willed it that way. Sinhô Badaró himself would have preferred things as they were in that chromo, with everyone dancing merrily to flutes on a field of heavenly blue. It was all Horacio's fault. Why did he have to come meddling with land that was not his, that could only belong to the Badarós, that no one would think of disputing with them? Horacio was the one who had willed it like that; Sinhô would have preferred a holiday, a lass with her foot in the air beginning a dance over the flowering greensward. Some day it would be like that here, the way it was in Europe. And a smile spread over Sinhô Badaró's face, above his beard, as if, like a prophet or a fortune-teller with cards, he were reading the future.

At the bend where the side-road forked off from the highway the man with the guitar appeared:

When I die,

Bury me 'neath a cacao tree. . . .

But the sound of hoofs drowned out the song, and Sinhô was suddenly conscious of its absence. He was no longer seeing a country maiden dancing in the land of cacao, but planted forests and prices dictated from Ilhéos. He saw the man with fingers on his guitar as his feet plodded down the muddy road. Emerging upon the highway, he stood aside to permit Sinhô Badaró and his lads to pass.

“Good evening, boss.”

“Good evening.” And the
cabras
replied in chorus: “Pleasant journey.”

“May Our Lord go with you.”

The song died away in the distance as the man strumming his guitar was left farther and farther behind, until soon his voice was no longer audible as he went on singing his mournful refrains, as he went on lamenting the life that he had to lead and asking to be buried beneath a cacao tree. The saying was that it was the cacao slime that trapped men's feet and held them here. Sinhô Badaró did not know of a single one who had gone back. He knew many who mourned their fate, just as this Negro did, who mourned it day and night, in the huts, in the wine-shops, in the offices, in the café—many who said that this was an ugly country and an unlucky one as well, a world's end of a place, with no amusements and no pleasure to be had, where people killed for the sake of killing, and where one was rich today and tomorrow poorer than Job. Sinhô Badaró knew many of this kind; he had listened to such talk dozens of times; he had seen men sell their groves, get their money together, and swear that they were leaving never to return. They would set out for Ilhéos expecting to catch the first boat that left for Bahia. Bahia was a big city; they had everything there: fine stores, comfortable houses, theatres, everything a man could wish for; you had money in your pocket and could enjoy life. But before the boat had sailed the man would be back, the viscous cacao would have clung to his feet and held him, and he would once more sink his money in a piece of land and start planting. Some who did succeed in going, after having made the trip by sea, when they arrived in Bahia were unable to talk of anything but the land they had left behind, the Ilhéos country. And it was certain, as certain as his name was Sinhô Badaró, that after six months or a year had passed, the same individual would return, minus his money, to start the same life again. They said that the cacao clung to a man's feet and he could never leave. That was what the songs said, the songs that were sung on plantation nights.

Sinhô and his men were now among the cacao trees; for this was the Widow Merenda's grove, on the edge of the forest of Sequeiro Grande. Sinhô Badaró had heard that she had made an agreement with Horacio; but this would not prevent his taking advantage of the side-road that shortened his journey by something like a mile. If she was with Horacio, so much the worse for her and for her two sons, for then these groves would be added to the new ones that the Badarós meant to plant on the land where the forest stood now. Within five years Sinhô would be entering the offices of Zude Brothers and Company to sell them the cacao from these new plantations. He had said it, and so it would be; for he was not a man to go back on his word. That shepherd lass who was just beginning her dance in the picture on the parlour wall—she would be dancing over a field of golden-yellow with ripened cacao, which was much prettier than that blue in the chromo. Much prettier.

The first shot was accompanied by many others. Sinhô Badaró barely had time to rein back his horse, which received the bullet in its belly and fell over on one side. His
jagunços
were dismounting and taking shelter behind their kneeling burros. Sinhô meanwhile was striving to free his leg, which had been caught beneath his dying mount. His eyes sought to pierce the darkness, and even from where he lay he was able to make out Horacio's ruffians lying in ambush behind some breadfruit trees near the road.

“There they are, behind that tree,” he said.

Following the first shots there was a dead silence as Sinhô still tried to work his leg free. Having succeeded in doing so, he rose to his full height and a bullet tore through his hat. Firing his pistol, he shouted to his men: “Come on, we'll finish them off!”

The head of one of the attacking party appeared from behind the breadfruit tree as the fellow took aim. Telmo was standing at Sinhô's side. “I'll take care of him, boss,” he said in his effeminate voice. With this he raised his rifle and the man's head tossed and dropped like an overripe fruit. Sinhô advanced, firing as he went. He and his men were now sheltered by a cluster of cacao trees, from where they had a sight of the enemy in his hiding-place. There were five of the latter all together, counting the one who had been killed. The Widow Merenda's two boys and three more of Horacio's
capangas
were there. Sinhô levelled his weapon and fired from behind Viriato. Meanwhile they were advancing through the trees, for Sinhô's plan was to fall upon their opponents from the rear. The latter, however, perceived this manoeuvre and in order to avoid it deemed it best to retire a short distance. As they did so, Sinhô got another of them. The man fell writhing, one hand and a foot in the air, and Viriato disposed of him.

“That will be enough, you son of a bitch. This is no time for dancing.”

In the midst of all the fracas Sinhô remembered the girl in the picture, with one foot upraised. This was no time for dancing. Viriato was right. They went on. A bullet caught Costinha in the shoulder and the blood spattered down on the tip of Sinhô Badaró's boots.

“It's nothing,” said Costinha, “only a scratch.” And he kept on firing.

They continued circling around, and the three men left in the hiding-place, seeing that the game was up, took to their heels through the grove. Sinhô fired his pistol in the direction in which they had fled and then went over to the black horse he had ridden and laid his hand on the animal's neck, which was still warm. The blood was flowing from its belly, making a little pool on the ground. Telmo came up and began removing the saddle, as Viriato went in search of his burro, which had strayed some little distance while the shooting was going on. Sinhô now mounted the donkey and Telmo put the horse's harness on his own burro. Viriato rode on Costinha's beast, with the wounded man on the crupper behind, holding a hand to his shoulder to stop the blood.

Thus mounted they went on down the road, Sinhô still grasping his pistol. There was an almost mournful look in his eyes as he endeavoured to penetrate the darkness round about him. But there was no music now, no voice singing of the troubles of this land. There was no faintest bit of moon to light the corpses beside the cacao trees. Behind him Telmo, with his high-pitched voice which was like a woman's, was boasting vaingloriously:

“I got the bastard, right through the head.”

A candle, which pious hands had placed there, was casting its light on a newly made cross beside the road; and Sinhô Badaró reflected that, if they were to illuminate like this all the crosses that would be raised there from now on, the highways of the land of cacao would be brighter even than the streets of Ilhéos. He felt sad about everything. “This is no time for dancing, my lass, but it is not my fault. No, it isn't.”