They are clutching at his bosom now. Something is pressing down upon him from above; what is it? This is witchcraft; it is a curse that they are calling down on him. A woman’s curse on the head of a Negro. There comes from the forest a voice repeating Sinhô Badaró’s words:
“Do you enjoy killing people? Don’t you feel anything at all? Nothing on the inside?”
The entire forest is laughing at him, the entire forest is screaming those words at him, the forest is clutching his heart, dancing in his head. There in front of him is Dona Tereza—not all of her, only her face. This is witchcraft, a curse they are calling down on his Negro head. Damião well knows what they want. They want him not to kill Firmo. Dona Tereza is pleading with him, but what can he do? Sinhô Badaró is an upright man. Dona Tereza has a white face. Someone is weeping. But who can it be? Is that Dona Tereza’s face there on the ground, or is it Negro Damião? Whoever it is, is weeping. It hurts worse than a knife-cut, worse than a sizzling coal on black flesh.
They have seized his arms; he cannot kill. They have seized his heart; he cannot kill. Down Damião’s black cheeks tears are flowing from Dona Tereza’s blue eyes. The forest is shaking with laughter, shaking with groans; Damião is surrounded by the witchery of the night. He sits down on the ground and weeps, softly, like a punished child.
The sound of a burro’s hoofs grows louder along the highway. They are coming nearer, nearer every moment, and Firmo’s face appears beneath the light of the moon. Negro Damião shakes himself and rises, a knot in his throat, his hands trembling on his rifle. The forest screams at him from round about. Firmo is coming nearer.
7
“Baccarat crystal,” announced Horacio, tapping the goblet with his finger as little clear-ringing sounds were heard about the table. “It cost me a pretty penny,” he went on. “I got it when we were married. Sent to Rio for it.”
Lawyer Virgilio—“Dr. Virgilio”—raised his glass, where the drops of Portuguese wine had stained the transparent crystal a blood-red.
“It is the very refinement of good taste,” he said, holding the goblet level with his eyes.
His remark was addressed to all of them, but his gaze was fixed on Ester. It was as if he were trying to tell her that he knew perfectly well that the good taste was hers. His voice was orotund and well modulated, and he picked his words as carefully as if he had been engaged in an oratorical contest. He sipped his wine like a connoisseur, as if endeavouring to estimate the worth of the vintage. His fine manners, his languid gaze, his blond hair, all were in contrast to the room. Horacio sensed this vaguely, and Maneca Dantas was aware of it. But for Ester the room did not exist. In the presence of the young attorney, she had been suddenly snatched away from the plantation, carried back to bygone days. It was as though she were still in the convent school, on one of those holidays at the end of the year when she and her schoolmates danced with the finest and most distinguished youth of the capital. She smiled at everything, and she, too, affected an overrefinement in her words and manners as a gentle melancholy that was almost happiness took possession of her. “It was the wine,” she thought. Wine went to her head very easily. So thinking, she drank some more, and all the while she was drinking in Virgilio’s words.
“It was at a party in honour of Senator Lago—a ball in celebration of his election, as a matter of fact. And what a party, Dona Ester! You really cannot imagine it. It was all so very aristocratic. The Paiva sisters were there.” Ester knew them, for they had been schoolmates. “Mariinha was charming in blue taffeta, like a dream.”
“She is pretty,” Ester agreed, but there was a certain reserve in her voice that did not escape Virgilio.
“Ah, but not the prettiest girl in school, in her day,” said the young lawyer, correcting himself. Ester blushed, and took another sip of wine.
Virgilio went on discoursing. He spoke of music, mentioned a certain waltz by name, and Ester remembered the melody. At this point Horacio spoke up.
“Ester is a first-rate pianist, eh!” he said.
Virgilio’s voice at once took on a suppliant tone.
“Well, then, after dinner we shall be happy to listen to her. Surely, she will not deny us that pleasure.”
But Ester said no, she had not touched the piano for a long while, her fingers had lost their suppleness, and moreover the piano was in a terrible condition—all out of tune, as there was no one to look after it here in this godforsaken place.
Virgilio, however, would not accept any excuses. Turning to Horacio, he begged him to “insist that Dona Ester stop being so modest and consent to fill the house with harmony.” Horacio dutifully insisted.
“Stop beating around the bush and play for this young man. I want to hear you, too. After all, I put a nice little sum of money into that piano, the best they had in Bahia. It was a devil of a job getting it out here, and what use is it? Money thrown away—six contos de reis.” He repeated the phrase, as if unburdening himself of something that was on his mind. “Six contos thrown away.” He glanced at Maneca Dantas. The latter should be capable of understanding how he felt. Maneca decided that he must lend his support.
“Six contos is a lot of money. It’s a cacao grove.”
Virgilio, on the other hand, was incorrigible.
“What are six contos de reis, six miserable contos, when they are laid out to give happiness to one’s wife, colonel?” As he said this, he raised a finger close to the colonel’s face, a finger with a well-manicured nail and with an advocate’s ring, the ruby of which gleamed showily. “You may say what you like, colonel, but I will guarantee you never spent six contos that brought you as much satisfaction as when you purchased that piano. Isn’t that so?”
“Well, I was glad to do it, of course. She had a piano at home, you know, but it was a cheap and flimsy little affair and I didn’t want to bring it out here.” This was said with a sweeping gesture of contempt. “So I bought this one. But she almost never touches it. Once in a lifetime—”
Ester listened to all this, a mounting hatred inside her, a hatred greater even than that she had felt on her wedding night, when Horacio had torn her clothes off and had hurled himself upon her body. She was slightly under the influence of wine, intoxicated also by Virgilio’s words, and her eyes once more held the restless dreams of the schoolgirl that once had been. In those eyes Horacio was transformed into a filthy pig, like one of those on the plantation that wallowed in the mudholes down by the highway. Virgilio, by contrast, appeared a wandering knight, a musketeer, a French count, an admixture of the characters in the novels she had read in school, all of them noble, daring, and handsome. In spite of it all, in spite of the hatred that she felt—or because of that hatred, perhaps?—the dinner was delicious. She sipped another goblet of wine.
“Very well, then,” she announced with a smile, “I’ll play.” She had spoken for Virgilio’s benefit. Then she turned to Horacio. “You never ask me,” she said. Her voice was mild and gentle, but her hatred was satisfied because she now realized that she had a means of revenge. Wishing to hurt him as deeply as possible, she went on: “I thought you didn’t like music. Now that I know you do, that piano’s never going to have a rest.”
But it was lost on Horacio. For him these were not feigned words. This was not the Ester he had known; this was another one who thought of him and his desires. He felt a glow of kindliness breaking through the many layers with which his heart was covered and laving him with goodwill. Possibly he had been unjust toward Ester; he had not understood her; she was from another world. He felt that he must promise her something very fine and generous, something that would make her very happy.
“For the holidays,” he said, “we’re going up to Bahia.” He was speaking to her and to her alone, taking no account of the others at the table.
Thereupon the conversation resumed its normal course. A brilliant one it was, limited almost exclusively to Ester and Virgilio
and consisting of descriptions of parties and a discussion of fashions, music, and novels. Horacio was lost in admiration of his wife, but Maneca Dantas looked on with wary eyes.
“I like Georges Ohnet,” Ester was saying. “I wept when I read Le Grand Industriel.”
“Perhaps,” said Virgilio, and his tone was slightly melancholy, “because you found in it something of the autobiographical?”
Horacio and Maneca Dantas got nothing of this, and even Ester was a bit slow in comprehending. But when she did understand, she put a hand to her face and shook her head nervously.
“Oh, no, no!”
“Ah!” sighed Virgilio.
Ester felt that he was going a little too far.
“That is not what I meant to say.”
But Virgilio paid no heed. He was beaming, his eyes glowing.
“And Zola? Have you read Zola?” he finally asked.
No, she had not read him; the sisters at the convent would not permit it. Virgilio opined that, really, he did not think it the proper thing for young ladies. But a married woman—he had a copy of Germinal at Ilhéos; he would send it to Dona Ester.
The Negro women had finished serving the endless desserts, and Ester suggested that they take their coffee in the drawing-room. Virgilio quickly rose, drew back her chair, and stood aside for her to pass. Horacio looked on with a certain distant envy, while Maneca Dantas admired the attorney’s manners. As he saw it, education was a great thing; and he thought of his own sons and imagined them, in the future, as being like “Dr. Virgilio.” Ester left the room, the men following.
It was raining outside, a fine drizzle shot through with moonbeams. There were many stars, with no other light to dim their heavenly lustre. Virgilio went over to the door and stepped out on the veranda. Felicia came in with the coffee tray and Ester began serving the sugar. Virgilio returned from the veranda and observed, as if he were declaiming a poem:
“It is only in the forest that one sees a night as lovely as this.”
“It’s pretty, yes,” agreed Maneca Dantas, mixing chicory with his coffee. “Another little spoonful, if you please,” he said, turning to Ester. “I like my coffee sweet.” Then he addressed the lawyer once more. “A very pretty night, and this shower makes it all the prettier.” He had to make an effort to keep up with the rhythm that Virgilio and Ester gave to the conversation; but now he was content, for he had the feeling that he had made a remark that was comparable to theirs.
“And you, doctor? How many?”
“Just a little, Dona Ester. That will be enough. Thank you very much. And do you not find, senhora—you, too—that progress slays beauty?”
Ester handed the sugar-bowl to Felicia and paused a moment before replying. She was grave and pensive.
“I think that progress may also be very beautiful.”
“But in the great cities, with all their lights, one cannot even see the stars. And a poet loves stars. Dona Ester—those of heaven and those of earth.”
“But there are other nights when there are no stars.” Ester’s voice now was deep; it came from her heart. “On stormy nights it is terrible.”
“It must be terribly beautiful—” The sentence was left hanging in the air, dangling before them. “For there is a beauty that is terrible,” he added.
“Perhaps,” said Ester, “but on nights like that I am afraid.” And she gave him a beseeching look, as if he were a friend of long standing.
Virgilio saw that she was not acting now, that she was pained, very deeply pained; and it was at that moment that he for the first time let his eyes rest upon her with real interest. Gone was his jovial and at the same time astute manner; its place had been taken by something more serious and profound.
Horacio now took a hand.
“Do you know what this foolish girl is afraid of, doctor? Of the cry of frogs when the snakes swallow them down there on the river bank.”
Virgilio, too, had already heard that heart-rending cry.
“I understand,” was all he said.
It was a blissful moment. Ester’s eyes were now filled with a wholesome, unfeigned happiness. She was not acting. It was but a second, but that second was enough. Even her hatred for Horacio was gone.
She went over to the piano. Maneca Dantas, meanwhile, began to expound to Virgilio the business that they had in hand. It was an important “ouster,” involving many contos de reis. Virgilio had to force himself to pay attention. Horacio from time to time put in a word out of his own experience. Virgilio cited a law. The first chords from the piano were vibrating in the room. The lawyer smiled.
“Now we are going to listen to Dona Ester,” he said. “Afterwards we will see what we can do about increasing your plantation.”
Maneca assented with a gesture, and Virgilio joined Ester at the piano. The waltz that she was playing was not confined to the drawing-room, but made its way outside, across the fields, and all the way to the forest at the back of the house. On the sofa Maneca Dantas was conversing with Horacio.
“A fine lad, eh? And what ability! Why, they say he’s even a poet. And how he can talk! He’ll make a good lawyer for us. He’s got brains in his head.”
“And Ester,” said Horacio, “what do you have to say about her, my friend? Where in Ilhéos, or even in Bahia—even in Bahia,” he repeated, “will you find a woman of such education? She knows all the tricks: French, music, fashions, everything. She has a head on her shoulders,” and he tapped his own head with one finger. “She’s more than just a pretty little thing.” He spoke with pride, as an owner might of his property. His words breathed vanity. He was happy because he imagined that Ester was playing for him, playing because he had asked her. Maneca Dantas nodded his head. “She’s an educated woman, all right, that she is.”
At the piano, his eyes brimming with tenderness, Virgilio was humming the melody. When Ester finished and rose, he put out a hand to assist her. She remained standing there beside him as Virgilio clapped his hands in applause and whispered to her, for her alone to hear:
“You are like a little bird in the snake’s mouth.”
Maneca Dantas was enthusiastic; he wanted more. Horacio came over to them. With a supreme effort Ester restrained her tears.
8
At the edge of the forest Negro Damião was waiting for a man in ambush. In the light of the moon he was seeing hallucinatory visions, and he was suffering. At the edge of another forest, in the drawing-room of the Big House, Dr. Virgilio was putting his knowledge of the law at the service of the two colonels and their ambition and was discovering love in Ester’s frightened eyes. Beside the forest that ran down the slope of the hill on the other side, on the Badarós’ Sant’ Ana da Alegria Plantation, Antonio Victor also was waiting, his feet dangling in the river water. The stream at this point was a small one, and its calm, clear waters were strewn with a mixture of fallen leaves from the cacao trees on the one side and those trees which stood on the opposite bank, huge trees that the hand of man had not planted. These waters formed the boundary between the forest and the groves, and Antonio Victor, as he waited, was thinking that it would not be long before fire and ax would have laid low this wood. It would soon be all cacao groves, and the river would no longer mark any separation. Juca Badaró was talking of felling the forest this very year, and workmen were getting ready to burn it over; the cacao saplings that were to fill the space now occupied by the wood were already being prepared.
Antonio Victor was fond of the forest. His home town of Estancia, so distant now even in his thoughts, was situated within a wood, with two rivers encircling it, and the trees overran its streets and public squares. He was better accustomed to the forest, where all the hours were hours of twilight, than he was to the cacao groves, glowing so brightly with their ripened fruit the colour of old gold. He had formed the habit of coming here during his first days on the plantation, when his work in the
groves was ended. Here it was that he took his rest. Here it was that he remembered Estancia, still present in his recollections, and recalled Ivone, whom he had left behind on the bridge over the Piauhitinga River. It was here that he suffered the gentle pangs of melancholy.
It had been hard for him at first. In addition to the gnawing pain of homesickness, the work was heavy, a great deal heavier than it had been on the little millet plot that he had cultivated with his brothers before coming to these lands in the south. Here on the plantation they rose at four o’clock in the morning to prepare the dried beef and manihot flour for their noonday lunch; and then, after gulping down a pot of coffee, they had to be at the grove, gathering cacao, by five, just as the sun had barely begun to appear above the hill at the back of the Big House. Then it began beating down on the bare backs of Antonio Victor and the other workers, especially those who had come down with him from Bahia and were not used to it. Their feet would sink into the mire, the viscous molten cacao would stick to them, and then from time to time there would come a rain that would leave them in even a sorrier plight than they had been before, for, having been blown in over the tufted groves, it brought with it bits of brushwood, insects, and filth of all sorts. At midday—they could tell it by the sun—work would stop, and after eating their lunch they would shake down a soft breadfruit from some breadfruit tree for their dessert. But the foreman astride his burro would already be shouting to them to take up their scythes again; and they would begin once more and keep it up until six o’clock in the evening, at which time the sun abandoned the groves.
After that came night, mournful and filled with weariness, without a woman with whom to stay, without Ivone to caress on a nonexistent bridge, without the fishing parties such as they had in Estancia. People talked about the money to be made in the south. Heaps upon heaps of money. But here all that they got for all this work was two and a half milreis a day, to be wholly spent at the plantation store, a miserable wage at the end of the month when accounts were settled. Night came, bringing with it far-off longings, and thoughts as well; and Antonio Victor would come down to the edge of the forest, to dip his feet in the river, shut his eyes, and give himself over to his memories. The others would remain in the mud huts, having flung themselves down on the wooden bunks to sleep the sleep of utter exhaustion. Others would sing tiranas, love-songs filled with longing, and the guitars would moan as the airs of other lands were sung, bringing memories of a world left behind. It was enough to tear one’s heart out.