The Violent Land (9 page)

Down the highway where the afternoon breeze was carrying a cloud of red dust the two men came, each with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Viriato, a back-country mulatto, was suggesting a wager.

“I'll bet you five milreis our man comes from my side.”

As it happened, the highway forked near Firmo's little plantation. That was why Sinhô Badaró had sent two men—one for each road. The Negro Damião, who was his trusted man, a crack shot, and as devoted as a hound to his master, was to station himself along the path by which it was most likely that Firmo would come, since it was the shorter route and he would save time that way. Viriato was to wait on the highway, behind a guava tree, at a spot where others had fallen. And now Viriato was proposing a bet, and in spite of the fact that it was almost certain that Firmo would come along the side-road. Damião would not take him. Viriato marvelled at this.

“What's the matter with you, brother? Are you short of dough?”

But it was not because he lacked the five milreis, representing two days' pay, that Damião would not accept the wager. Many times he had bet more than that, on other similar expeditions, on other afternoons like this. Today, however, there was something that kept him from betting.

Night was falling as the two men went down the highway, where not a traveller was to be seen. The only person they met was a fellow on a burro, who looked at them long and hard and then spurred his mount in order to put as much distance as possible between himself and the pair from the plantation. For who was there in these parts that did not know Negro Damião, Sinhô Badaró's
jagunço,
his trusty? Damião's fame had long since spread far and wide, far beyond the confines of Palestina, of Ferradas, and of Tabocas. From the wine-shops of Ilhéos, where his exploits were retailed, it had travelled by small boats all the way to the capital, and a newspaper of Bahia had already published his name in big letters. Since it was an opposition newspaper, it had had some very bad things to say about him, had called him some ugly names. Damião recalled that day perfectly. Sinhô Badaró had sent for him to come up to the Big House at lunch time. There were a lot of people at the table, and the unstoppered bottles of wine revealed the presence of the judge. Lawyer Genaro, the Badarós' attorney, was there also; he was the one who had brought the newspaper. Lawyer Genaro was not so brilliant as Lawyer Ruy, he could not make speeches full of high-sounding words, but he did know, meticulously, all the intricate details of the law and how to get around it, and Sinhô Badaró preferred him to any of the various lawyers who were in practice at the bar of Ilhéos. Sinhô smiled at Damião and pointed him out to the others.

“Here's our wild man.”

Seeing that Sinhô laughed, Damião gave a broad innocent grin, his perfect white teeth gleaming in his enormous black mouth. The judge, who had drunk his fill, laughed heartily also, but Lawyer Genaro barely smiled, and you felt that he was doing that out of politeness. Sinhô Badaró went on talking, speaking now to Damião.

“Did you know, Negro, that the newspapers in the capital are concerned over you? They say there's no better killer in the region than Damião, Sinhô Badaró's boy.”

He said this with an air of pride, and it was with pride that Damião answered him.

“Yes, sir, that's right, that is. There's no boy who's a better shot than this Negro right here.” And he grinned once more, with satisfaction.

Lawyer Genaro took a swallow and filled his glass. Sinhô Badaró burst out laughing, and the judge joined in the merriment. Then Sinhô had read the piece in the paper to Damião, who only half understood it, for there were many expressions in it that were too difficult for him. But he was pleased when he heard Sinhô call: “Don' Ana! Don' Ana!”

His daughter came in from the kitchen, where she had been supervising the serving of the lunch.

“What is it, Father?”

The judge looked at her with a show of interest in his eyes.

“Take fifty milreis from the strong-box,” Sinhô Badaró directed, “and give them to Damião. His name is in the newspapers.”

He then had dismissed the Negro, and the conversation around the lunch table had been resumed. As for Damião, he went off to Palestina to spend the money on whores. He drank all night long, telling everybody how a newspaper in Bahia had printed a piece about him, saying there was nobody who was as good a shot as he was.

This was why it was that the man on the burro had spurred his mount. He knew that a bullet from Negro Damião meant a coffin with a funeral to order, and he knew besides that Sinhô Badaró's boys were guaranteed protection; there was no police so far as they were concerned. Everybody knew that the judge was the Badarós' man; they even had planted a grove for him; the Badarós were riding high in politics and could depend on the courts. As he saw the man spurring his burro, Viriato smiled with amusement, but Negro Damião remained solemn-faced.

“What's the matter with you, brother?” Viriato repeated.

Damião himself did not know what the matter was. Many times before he had gone out to wait in ambush and kill someone, but today it seemed as if it were the first time.

At this point the road forked off.

“So you don't want to bet, black boy?”

“I've told you I didn't.”

They separated, and Viriato went off whistling.

Night had fallen and the moon was rising. A good night for an ambush. You could see the road as plain as day. Negro Damião took the side-path; he knew of a tree that was just right for his purpose. It was a leafy breadfruit tree at the edge of the road and appeared to have been put there purposely for a man to hide behind and fire on some passer-by. “I never fired on anyone from behind this tree,” Damião thought to himself. The Negro was sad, for from the veranda he had overheard the conversation of the Badaró brothers. He had heard what Sinhô said to Juca, and it was this that disturbed him tonight. His innocent heart was in agony. Damião had never felt like that. He could not understand it; his body did not pain him anywhere, he wasn't sick, and yet it was the same as if he were.

If before that anyone had told him that it was a terrible thing to waylay men in ambush, to kill them, he would not have believed it; for his heart was innocent and free of all malice. The children of the plantation adored Negro Damião, who played horse with the smaller ones, went to get nice soft breadfruit for them from the big breadfruit trees, brought them clusters of golden bananas from the banana groves where the snakes lived, saddled tame horses for the older ones, and took them all to the river to bathe and taught them how to swim. The children adored him, for them there was no one better than Negro Damião.

His profession was killing. Damião did not even know how it had all begun. The colonel sent him out; he killed. He could not have told you how many he had killed, for Damião could not count beyond five, and then only on his fingers. He had no interest in knowing. He did not hate anyone; he never did anyone any harm. At least he had thought so until today. Why, then, today was his heart so heavy, as though he were sick? He was very kind and thoughtful of others in his rude way. If there was a sick worker on the plantation, Damião would show up to keep him company, to teach him about herb remedies, and to go for Jeremias the witch-doctor. Sometimes travelling salesmen stopping at the Big House would insist on his telling them of some of the men he had killed, and Damião would do so, in a calm voice, innocent of all evil.

For him an order of Sinhô Badaró's was something that admitted of no discussion. If Sinhô sent him to kill, he had to kill. Just as, when Sinhô sent him to saddle the black mule for a journey, Damião had to saddle it as quickly as possible. What was more, there was no danger of going to jail; for one of Sinhô Badaró's boys never was arrested. Sinhô could guarantee his men that; it was a pleasure to work for him. He was not like Colonel Clementino, who sent you out to do a job and then turned you in. Damião despised the colonel. A boss like him was no boss for a man of courage. Damião had worked for the colonel a long time ago, when but a youngster. It was there that he had learned to shoot, and it was for Clementino that he had killed his first man. And then one day he had had to flee the plantation, when the police came looking for him, without the colonel's even having warned him. He had taken refuge on the Badaró estate, and now he was Sinhô's trusty. If in his heart there was any ill will toward anyone, it lay in the profound contempt that he felt for Colonel Clementino. At times, when the colonel's name was mentioned in the workers' huts, Damião would spit and say:

“He's not a man. He's a bigger coward than a woman. He ought to wear petticoats.”

He would say this and then laugh, laugh with his white teeth, his big eyes, his entire face. A happy, wholesome laugh, like that of a child. As he roamed the plantation, none could distinguish his laugh from that of the young ones with whom he played on the lawn beside the Big House.

Negro Damião had reached the breadfruit tree. Unslinging his rifle, he rested it on the tree-trunk. From his trousers pocket he took out a twist of tobacco and with his knife began cutting himself a
cigarro
. The moon now was round and enormous; Damião had never seen it so large. Inside himself he felt a huge hand, like one of his own great black hands, clutching at him. In his ears Sinhô Badaró's words were still ringing: “Do you enjoy killing poeple? Don't you feel anything at all? Nothing on the inside?” Damião had never thought that he could feel anything; but today the colonel's words were like a weight on his chest, a weight it was impossible even for a Negro as strong as Damião to remove. He had always hated physical pain. He bore it well, however. There was that time when he had cut a deep gash in his left arm with his knife as he was gathering cacao nuts in the grove. It was a cut that went almost to the bone, and he had loathed the pain of it; but nevertheless he had gone on whistling as Don' Ana Badaró poured iodine on the wound. Then there was that other time when Jacudino also had cut himself with a knife: three gashes in the leg. That sort of thing, that kind of pain, he could understand; it was, so to speak, something that was there in front of his eyes. But the pain he felt now was different. Things of which he had never thought before now filled his head, which was almost as big as that of an ox. Sinhô Badaró had put words into his head, and in their wake came images and sensations, old images long forgotten and new sensations, unknown before.

He had finished rolling his smoke. The light of a match glowed in the forest. He puffed on his cigarette. He could never imagine the colonel being remorseful. Remorseful was the word. Once a travelling salesman had asked him if he, Damião, never felt any remorse. He had asked what the word meant, the salesman had explained, and Damião had then replied, with the utmost innocence: “Why should I?”

The travelling salesman was astonished, and to this day still told the story in the cafés of Bahia when with some of his cronies he was discoursing largely on the subject of mankind, human life, and various philosophies of life. Some while after that, at Christmas time, Sinhô Badaró had procured a friar to say Mass at the plantation. They had set up an altar on the veranda—and a lovely altar it was; Damião smiled at the memory of it, smiled for the one and only time that night, as he waited there in ambush. Damião had been of great help to Don' Ana, to the late Dona Lidia, and to Don' Olga, Juca's wife, as they made preparations for the fête. The friar had arrived that night, and there was a dinner with any number of good things to eat: hens, turkeys, pork, mutton, game, and even fish, for which they had had to send to Agua Branca. There was something cold as a rock, which they called an “ice”; and Don' Ana, who was just coming into young womanhood, had given some of it to Damião. It had burnt his tongue, and Don' Ana had laughed heartily at the face which the Negro made.

Mass was said the next morning; and those on the plantation who were lovers were married and the young ones were baptized, the godfathers and godmothers being, always, members of the Badaró household. Then the friar had preached a sermon, better than any speech that Lawyer Ruy was capable of making, and he made some very fine ones to the juries in Ilhéos. True, the friar's tongue got rather twisted, for he was a foreigner; but perhaps for that very reason, when he came to speak of hell and the flames that burned the damned forever and ever, he caused his listeners to shudder all the more. Even Damião was frightened. He had never thought much about hell before, and he seldom thought of it again afterwards. It was only today that he remembered the friar and the angry vehemence with which the latter had cried out against those who slay their fellow men. The friar had had much to say about remorse, which was hell in this life. Damião already knew what the word meant, but it made little impression on him at that time.

He was impressed, it is true, with the description of hell, a fire that never subsided but was endlessly burning human flesh. On his wrist Damião had the scar from a burn where a live coal had fallen on him one day while he was helping the Negro women in the kitchen. It had hurt frightfully. So he could imagine one's whole body being burnt, forever and ever and ever. The friar had said that all you had to do was to kill a man and you would be certain to go to hell. Damião did not even know how many men he had killed. He knew that it was more than five, because he could count, and had counted, up to five. After that he had lost count, but he had not thought it was of any great importance. But today, as he puffed on his cigarette there in ambush, he made a vain effort to remember them all. First there had been that pack-driver who had insulted Colonel Clementino. It was something wholly unlooked for. He had been going along with the colonel, both of them mounted, when they had met a pack-train on its way to Banco da Victoria. The pack-driver, the moment he laid eyes on Clementino, had lashed him across the face with his long burro-whip. Clementino was white with rage.