These reflections were broken off when, taking advantage of a momentary lull in the conversation between Horacio and Maneca Dantas, Ester spoke:
“They tell me that you were playing the knight errant last evening, Dr. Virgilio.” She smiled, but her face was sad.
“I?” said Virgilio, his fork in the air.
“Ester is referring to the row in the café last night,” Horacio explained. “I heard of it, too.”
“But,” replied Virgilio, “there was no row.” He then went on to explain what had happened. He had had a bad case of the blues the evening before; he was restless for some reason—here he glanced at Ester—and, happening to meet Colonel Maneca, had invited him to the café for a drink.
“You mean you dragged me, doctor. Tell the story straight.” And Maneca Dantas laughed.
Well, they had gone to the café and were having a whisky, that was all, when Manuel de Oliveira came over to speak to them. At the table with him was a woman whom Virgilio had known in Bahia, in his student days. They danced a waltz together, and just as he was applauding for an encore, Juca Badaró had appeared and carried the woman off. He was not in the least interested in her, and the whole affair would have been of no importance whatsoever if Juca in passing had not made an insulting remark to him. Colonel Maneca Dantas had prevented him from avenging the insult, and he was grateful to the colonel, since otherwise he would have made a fool of himself over a creature who meant absolutely nothing to him. That was all there was to it—he called upon Maneca Dantas to bear him witness. But Ester was indifferent to explanations.
“What difference does it make, anyhow?” she said. “The café is the place where one would expect to find a young bachelor with no family ties. You have a perfect right to amuse yourself, and no one should reproach you for it. But our friend, Maneca here—that is a different story,” and she pointed a threatening finger at the colonel. “He has a wife and children. I think I shall have to tell her about it, eh?” Her smile was a joyless one.
Laughing heartily, Maneca begged her not to say anything to Dona Auricidia. “She’s terribly jealous.” Horacio then closed the discussion. “That will be enough, my dear. Everybody has a right to amuse himself one way or another, to forget his troubles.”
Virgilio was more at ease, for he now knew the cause of Ester’s vexation, that forced air of indifference, that trace of tears. What gossip might she not have heard, coming from those incredible old maids of the city, those pious old ladies with nothing to do but pry into other people’s lives? How he would love to take her in his arms and explain to her, amid a thousand caresses, that Margot meant nothing at all to him, that it was purely by accident that he had danced with her! A great feeling of tenderness came over him, and at the same time one that had in it a little of vanity, at knowing that she was sad because of jealousy. The maid was serving the coffee.
Horacio now invited Virgilio to step into his study, as there was something he wished to talk over with him. Maneca Dantas came also, and Ester remained behind with her crocheting. The study was a small room, the big iron safe being the most conspicuous piece of furniture. Virgilio sat down and Maneca took the armchair: “It’s more my size.” Horacio remained standing, rolling a straw cigarro. Virgilio waited, thinking the matter must have to do with some legal point in connection with the suit on which Horacio wanted his opinion. The colonel went on making his cigarette, rolling the tobacco slowly in his calloused hand and scraping the millet straw with a penknife. At last he spoke.
“I like the way you explained that to Ester,” he said. “She would have been worried about it otherwise, for she thinks a lot of you, doctor. The poor girl has almost no one to talk to, for she is much better educated than the other women here. She likes to talk to you, doctor; you both speak the same language.”
Virgilio dropped his gaze, and Horacio went on, after lighting the cigarette, which he had finished making.
“But that business last night, doctor, was a nasty affair. Do you know, sir, what Juca Badaró is going around saying?”
“I don’t know, and, to tell you the truth, colonel, I’m not interested. I realize that the Badarós have no reason for liking me. I am your attorney, sir, and, what is more, attorney for the party as well. It is natural that they should speak ill of me.”
Horacio put his foot on a chair; he was standing almost alongside Virgilio.
“It is your affair, of course, doctor. I don’t like to meddle in the lives of others. Not even when the other person is a friend of mine, as you are.”
“But what is it all about, anyway?” Virgilio wanted to know.
“Don’t you realize, doctor, that unless you do something about this, no one will ever again—you will pardon me for saying so—take you seriously in these parts?”
“But why?”
“Juca Badaró is going around telling God and everybody that he snatched a woman out of your arms, that he insulted you, and that you, sir, did nothing about it. He is saying—you will pardon me for repeating it—that you are a coward, sir.”
Virgilio turned pale, but controlled himself.
“Anyone who saw what happened,” he said, “knows that is not so. I had already had my dance and was waiting for an encore. Even so, when he took Margot by the arm, I was about to interfere, but she asked me not to do so. And afterwards, when he made that insulting remark, it was Colonel Maneca who held me back.”
Maneca Dantas now put in a word for the first time.
“It’s plain enough, doctor. If I had let you raise your hand at that moment, we would all be attending your funeral; for Juca already had his hand on his revolver, and no one around here wants to see you killed, sir.”
“Doctor,” said Horacio. “I’ve been in this country ever since I was a lad—that was a good many years ago—and I don’t know anyone who’s better acquainted with Ilhéos than I am. Our friend here is right: no one wants to see you killed, sir, above all myself, for I have need of your services. But neither do I want you to be disgraced around here, with the reputation of a coward. That is why I am talking to you like this.”
He stopped as if he had just made a long speech. Lighting another match, he stood holding it in his hand as he looked straight at the attorney, as if waiting for him to speak.
“And what do you think I ought to do, sir?” Virgilio asked.
The match had burned his finger, and Horacio tossed it to the floor; his cigarette remained unlighted, a small object clinging to his big lip.
“I have a cabra here,” he said, “a fellow you can trust. On Thursday Juca Badaró will be going up to the plantation, so I’m informed. For fifty milreis, sir, you can have the matter taken care of.”
“How?” Virgilio did not quite understand.
“For fifty milreis,” Maneca Dantas explained, “the man will do the job. On Thursday he will wait for Juca along the highway, and there’s not a saint in the calendar will be able to save him.”
“And,” said Horacio, encouragingly, “there is not the slightest risk, for the Badarós will say that it was I who sent the fellow. If there are any legal proceedings, it will be against me. But don’t let that worry you.”
Virgilio rose from his chair.
“But, colonel, that’s not courage, sending out a jagunço to kill a man in cold blood. That’s not what I call courage. Now, if it were a matter of my meeting Juca in the street and punching him in the face, that would be something else. But sending out a cabra to shoot him—no, I certainly don’t call that courage.”
“Well, that’s the way it is, doctor. And if you expect to make a career down here, you’d better let me call the man. Otherwise there is nothing to be done. You may be the best lawyer in the world, but no one would employ you.”
“Not even the party,” said Maneca Dantas.
Virgilio dropped back into his seat. He was thinking. This was something he had not
looked for. He knew that Horacio was right. In this country, sending out to kill was an act of courage; it made a man respectable. He knew very well there was no plot here. If there should be any trouble with the law, the blame would be on Horacio. But still he could see no good reason for his having Juca Badaró assassinated.
“Let me tell you one thing, doctor, for I’m a friend of yours.” It was Horacio speaking. “In any case, I am going to have Juca Badaró put out of the way. I had already made up my mind to this. He has killed four of my men”—he corrected himself—“that is to say, his men did it; but down here it’s the same as if he had done it himself. He set fire to Firmo’s plantation and attacked Braz’s home. And that’s not all he’s done. It’s better to put him out of the way once and for all. Next week I’m going to begin felling the forest, and Juca Badaró is not going to be there to watch me.”
He paused, once again struck a match, and puffed on his cigarette. He looked hard at Virgilio, and his voice was laden with meaning:
“I am merely trying to do you a favour, sir. All you have to do is to give the order to the man, and everybody will know, even though I take the blame, that it was you who sent him to dispose of Juca Badaró. After that no one will bother you, sir, nor any woman of yours. They will respect you.”
Maneca Dantas slapped Virgilio on the shoulder; to him it was the simplest thing in the world. “It doesn’t cost you anything to say four or five words.” And Horacio concluded: “You know, doctor, I like an educated man, but in this country nobody can get along on education alone.”
Virgilio lowered his head. The colonel was sending out to have Juca killed, but he wanted him to give the order to the jagunço; that way his name would be put on the roster of the brave in Ilhéos. He thought of Ester in the next room, crocheting, eating her heart out with jealousy. He thought of going away with her, of leaving this country for a civilized one—of going far away, away from these forests, these towns, this barbarous city, from this room, where these two colonels were advising him for his own good—for his own good—to send out and have a man killed. To flee with Ester, where the morning of every day would be different, the afternoons more beautiful, while at night the only laments would be the gentle sighs of love. In another, distant land—
Horacio’s voice came to him across the room:
“Better make up your mind, doctor.”
4
The long winter rains were heavy ones, with the water singing on the roof-tops and running down the window-panes. The wind from off the sea was shaking the trees in the garden as the leaves and green fruit fell to the ground. Ester closed her eyes and had a vision of a floating leaf whirling madly in the air, with the raindrops falling on it and weighting it down until it sank to earth. It made her shudder and want to sleep, and she huddled with her lover, her thighs intertwined with his, her head on his broad bosom. Virgilio kissed her lovely hair and put his lips gently to her closed eyelids. She threw out a bare arm and encircled his waist. Sleep was coming, her eyes were growing heavier every moment, her body was exhausted from the violence of their recent embrace. Virgilio in a quick, nervous voice continued talking to her, for he wanted her to stay awake and keep him company. It was midnight and the rain had not stopped, but was coming down harder than ever, and with it came the sleep that relaxed Ester’s body. He talked on, telling of things that had happened to him in his student days in Bahia. He even told of other women he had had in his life, to see if this would awaken her, cause her to fight against sleep. But Ester replied with monosyllables and ended by turning over on her stomach and burying her face in the pillows.
“Go on, dear, tell me—”
He saw that she was already asleep; and then it was that all the emptiness of his words came to him, all the things that he had been saying about his life as a student. Empty, wholly void of meaning and of interest. The raindrops were running down the window-pane—like tears, Virgilio thought. It must be good to be able to weep, to let suffering come out by way of the eyes and run down your face. That was the way it was with Ester. When she had learned of his dancing with Margot at the café, she had let the tears come, and after that it had been much easier to listen to and believe Virgilio’s explanations. Many people were that way: they found consolation in tears. But Virgilio did not know how to weep. Not even when he had received the news of his father’s sudden death in the backlands. And he had loved his father intensely; for he knew all that it had cost the old man to keep him in school; he knew of the pride his father had felt in him. But not even on that day had he wept. With a lump in his throat he had remained standing there in the street where an acquaintance had handed him his aunt’s letter containing the news. A lump in his throat, but not a tear in those dry eyes, so dry they smarted. Not a tear.
Down the window-pane the tears of the rain were falling, one after another. Virgilio thought that the night was weeping for the dead of this land. There were so many of them, only a cloudburst would ever be able to atone for all the blood that had been shed! What was he doing here in this land; why had he come here? It was late now, there was Ester—the only thing was to go away with her. When he came, he had been filled with ambition, had had visions of rivers of money, a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, a political career, with all this fertile cacao region in the palm of his hand. At first that had been all that he thought about, and things had gone well; everything had turned out according to his wishes: he had made money, the colonels had confidence in him, he had won success as a lawyer, and things were going very well politically, also; the breach between the state government and Rio was widening, and for anyone who had eyes to see, it was a certainty that the former would not be able to maintain itself in power after the coming election, while it might even fall before then, seeing that there were those in Bahia who were talking of federal intervention in the state. The opposition leaders were in Rio de Janeiro at the moment, engaged in negotiations; they had been received by the President of the Republic, and the situation was becoming clearer every day. There was a very good chance that he would be the candidate for deputy next year, and should there be a change of régime, there was no doubt as to his election.
Then Ester had appeared upon the scene, and all this had ceased to have any importance for him. The only thing that mattered now was her body, her eyes, her voice, her desires, her love for him. After all, he could make a career in Rio just as well as here; as a matter of fact, that was what he had first thought of doing, upon taking his degree in law. If he could get a place in a law office with the right kind of clients, he would not fail to get ahead. The time that he had spent in Tabocas and Ilhéos would not by any means have been wasted. He had learned here in a year and eight months more than he had in five years at school. It was commonly said that an “Ilhéos lawyer” could practice law anywhere in the world, and it was the truth. Here all the subtleties of the profession were called for; a thorough knowledge of the law and of the methods of making a farce of it were necessary. Wherever he might go, he undoubtedly would have a splendid chance of success; for it was not for nothing that here in Ilhéos he was looked upon as one of the best attorneys at the local bar. Naturally, it would not be quite so easy there; he would not get ahead so quickly as he would here, where he already had made a name for himself and had entered upon a political career. Easy and quickly: those two words stuck in Virgilio’s mind.
His rise here may have been a rapid one, but it had not been easy. Was it, by any chance, easy to have to send out and have men killed in order to be respected? In order to win the esteem of everyone and be able to hew out a political career? No, it was not easy. Not for him, at any rate, reared as he had been in another land, with other customs and other ways of looking at things. For the colonels down here, for the lawyers who had grown old in this country—for them it was easy—for Horacio, for the Badarós, for Maneca Dantas, for Dr. Genaro with all his pretensions to culture and his reputation for sobriety as a man who never visited
a house of prostitution. They sent out to kill as they would to prune a grove, or as they might take out a birth certificate at the registry office. Yes, for them it was easy enough, and Virgilio had given some little thought to this strange fact. But now he found himself viewing differently these rude men of the plantations, these tricky lawyers of the city and the towns, who calmly sent their cabras out to wait for their enemies along the highway and fire upon them from behind a tree. His ambition now was, first of all, to go away with Ester; and second, to forget all about the terrible dramas that were a daily occurrence in this region. It had been necessary for him to be put in the position where he himself had to send out and have a man killed in order for him to be able to realize the horrible ugliness of it all and the manner in which this country weighed men down.
The workers in the groves had the cacao slime on their feet, and it became a thick rind that no water could wash away. And they all of them—workers, jagunços, colonels, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and exporters—they all had that slime clinging to their souls, inside them, deep in their hearts, and no amount of education, culture, or refinement of feeling could cleanse them of it. For cacao was money, cacao was power, cacao was the whole of life; it was not merely something planted in the black and sap-giving earth: it was inside themselves. Growing within them, it cast over every heart a malignant shade, slaying all good impulses. Virgilio did not hate Horacio, Maneca Dantas, much less the smiling Negro to whom he had given the order to ambush Juca Badaró that Thursday night, words that it had cost him so much to utter. No, if he hated anything, it was cacao itself. He felt himself dominated by it, and resented the fact that he had not had the strength of character to say no and let Horacio, alone, assume the responsibility for Juca’s death.
The truth of the matter was he had not known to what an extent this land and its customs, everything that had to do with cacao, had taken possession of him. Once in Tabocas he had slapped Margot, and it was then that he realized for the first time that there was another Virgilio whom he did not know, different from the one who had sat on the bench at school, gentle and lovable, ambitious but merry-hearted, sympathetic to the troubles of others, sensitive always to suffering. Today he was a rude fellow—in what way was he different from Horacio? He was, indeed, like him; his reactions were the same. When he had first known Ester, he had thought of saving her from a monster, an abject and sluggish being. But what difference was there, after all? They were both of them assassins; they were both of them men who sent out capangas to kill; they both lived off the golden fruit of the cacao tree.