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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78403 ***
+
+
+
+
+                       LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 733
+                     Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
+
+
+
+
+                            Brazilian Short
+                                Stories
+
+
+                            Monteiro Lobato
+
+
+                        With an Introduction by
+                            Isaac Goldberg
+
+
+
+
+                        HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
+                            GIRARD, KANSAS
+
+
+
+
+                           Copyright, 1925,
+                        Haldeman-Julius Company
+
+
+                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+                        BRAZILIAN SHORT STORIES
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                                       PAGE
+
+ Introduction                             5
+
+ Modern Torture                          11
+
+ The Penitent Wag                        27
+
+ The Plantation Buyer                    43
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Monteiro Lobato represents the most recent phase of the Brazilian
+reaction against Gallic literary influence. Though not pretending
+primarily to be a writer, he yet has inaugurated what amounts not “to”
+almost to a new period of the national letters. At the bottom of his
+nationalism, however, is the one valid foundation of art: sincerity.
+If occasionally he overdoes his protest against the French, he may
+well be forgiven because of its sound basis; it is part of his own
+personality to see things in the primary colors, to play the national
+zealot not in any chauvinistic sense; he is no blind follower of the
+administrative powers, no nationalist in the ugly sense of cheap
+partisan drum-beating, but in the sense that true nationalism is the
+logical development of the fatherland’s potentialities. A personally
+independent fellow, then, who would achieve for his nation that same
+independence.
+
+The beginning of the World War found Monteiro Lobato established upon
+a fazenda, far from the thoughts and centers of literature. It was by
+accident that he discovered his gifts as a writer. The story is told
+that one day, rendered indignant by the custom of clearing stubble
+fields by fire, and thus endangering the bordering inhabitants, he sent
+a letter of protest to a large daily in São Paulo. It seems that the
+letter was too important, too well-written, too plainly indicative of
+natural literary talent, to be relegated to the corner where readers’
+jeremiads usually wail, and that, instead, it was “featured” upon the
+first page. From that day the die was cast. The episode, in my opinion,
+is far more important than it appears. For, whatever form in which
+the man’s later writings are published, they are in a more important
+degree just what this initial venture was: a protest, a means of civic
+betterment, a national contribution.
+
+It was with the collection named “Urupês” (Fungi) that Lobato
+definitely established himself. Upon the success of that book he has
+built a powerful publishing house, a splendid magazine (“Revista do
+Brasil”--The Brazilian Review), a veritable literary movement. He
+excels in stinging comment upon current affairs; he writes books
+for the primary schools; he is a practical nature bent upon visibly
+altering the national course. As a writer, he is “anti-literary,”
+scorning the finer graces. Together with a similar group in Buenos
+Aires he underestimates the aesthetic element in art, confusing it,
+perhaps, with the snobbish, aloof, vapory spirits who have a habit of
+infesting all movements with their neurotic lucubrations. Yet such
+a view may do him, as it does Manuel Gálvez in Argentina, or Upton
+Sinclair in the United States, injustice. His style, his attitude, his
+product, are directly conditioned by the ambient in which he works
+and the problems he has set out to solve. Less unjust, surely is the
+criticism that may be made against him when--as is characteristic of
+such natures--his earnestness degenerates into special pleading, when
+his intense feeling tapers off into sentimentality, and when what was
+meant to be humor falls away to caricature.
+
+Lobato’s work in every phase is first of all an act of nationalism.
+To this caustic spirit, the real Brazil--the Brazil that must set to
+work stamping its impress upon the arts of the near future--lies in the
+interior of the country, away from the cosmopolitanism of the littoral.
+Yet his practise largely belies this implied regionalism.
+
+That he is gifted with the rare faculty of self-criticism may be seen
+from a letter I received from him some time after I had introduced him
+to North American readers in a newspaper article.
+
+“I was born,” he wrote, “on the 18th of April, 1883, in Tabauté, State
+of São Paulo, the son of parents who owned a coffee plantation. I
+began my studies in the city, proceeding later to São Paulo, where
+I matriculated as a law student, being graduated, like everybody
+else, as a Bachelor of Laws. Fond of literature, I read a great deal
+in my youth: my favorite authors were Kipling, Maupassant, Tolstoi,
+Dostoievsky, Balzac, Wells, Dickens, Camillo Castello Branco, Eça de
+Queiroz and Machado de Assis ... but I never allowed myself to be
+dominated by any one.” (Let me interrupt the letter long enough to
+quote Lobato on literary influences. In his stimulating collection of
+critiques entitled “Idéas de Jéca Tatu” he has said: “Let us agree that
+imitation is, in fact, the greatest of creative forces. He imitates who
+assimilates processes. Who copies, does not imitate; he steals. Who
+plagiarizes does not imitate; he apes.” And let us recall that Lobato
+presents this book as “a war-cry in favor of personality).” To continue
+with the letter:
+
+“I like to see with my own eyes, smell with my own nose. All my
+work reveals this personal impression, almost always cruel, for, in
+my opinion, we are the remnant of a race approaching annihilation.
+Brazil will be something in the future, but the man of today, the
+Luso-Africano-Indian will pass out of existence, absorbed and
+assimilated by other, stronger races ... just as the primitive
+aborigine passed. Even as the Portuguese caused the disappearance
+of the Indian, so will the new races cause the disappearance of the
+hybrid Portuguese, whose rôle in Brazilian civilization is already
+fulfilled, having consisted in the vast labor of clearing the land by
+the destruction of the forests. The language will remain, gradually
+more and modified by the influence of the new milieu, so different from
+the Lusitanian milieu.
+
+“Brazil is an ailing country.”
+
+Let me interrupt once again, to say that in his pamphlet “Problema
+Vital,” Lobato studies this problem, indicating that man will be
+victorious over the tropical zone through the new arms of hygiene.
+The pamphlet caused a turmoil throughout Brazil, and sides were at
+once formed, the one considering Lobato a defamer of the nation, the
+other seeing in the work an act of sanative patriotism. As a result,
+a national program of sanitation was inaugurated. This realism of
+approach, so characteristic of Lobato, made of his figure Jéca Tatu a
+symbol that has in many minds replaced the idealized image of Pery,
+from Alencar’s “Guarany.” Jéca thus stands for the most recent critical
+reaction against national romanticism.
+
+“I recognize now,” continues Lobato in the letter, “that I was cruel,
+but it was the only way of stirring opinion in that huge whale of most
+rudimentary nervous system which is my poor Brazil. I am not properly
+a literary man. I take no pleasure in writing, nor do I attach the
+slightest importance to what is called literary glory and similar
+follies. I am a particle of extremely sensitive conscience that adopted
+the literary form,--fiction, the conte, satire,--as the only means of
+being heard and heeded. I achieved my aim and today I devote myself to
+the publishing business, where I find a solid means of sustaining the
+great idea that, in order to cure an ailing person he must first be
+convinced that he is, in fact, a sick man.”
+
+Here, as elsewhere, Lobato’s theory is harsher than his practise. He
+is, of course, a literary man, and has achieved a distinctive style;
+but he knows, as his letter hints, that his social strength may prove
+his literary weakness. The truth would seem to be that Monteiro Lobato
+is not so much a teller of stories as he is a critic of men. The
+three tales by which he is represented in this booklet come from his
+“Urupês”; they exhibit him at his favorite pursuit of caricaturing
+his fellow men, of deriding their political foibles, their personal
+weakness, their social shortcomings. “Modern Torture” would not have
+shamed Mark Twain. It is not so intimately Brazilian that it cannot
+apply, with little alteration, to wardheelers in the United States.
+“The Penitent Wag” is an experiment in the macabre that also serves as
+a piece of social criticism. “The Plantation Buyer” is just as comical
+in the United States of America as in the United States of Brazil.
+
+As I write, Lobato’s São Paulo is seething with revolt. Revolution, in
+ideas and in action have been the history of that region. It is not the
+least of Lobato’s virtues that his intellectual revolt seeks practical
+outlet. He means his blue-prints to be, some day, inspiring temples.
+And he is one of the finest social architects of contemporary Brazil.[1]
+
+                                                ISAAC GOLDBERG
+
+Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1924.
+
+
+
+
+                        BRAZILIAN SHORT STORIES
+
+
+
+
+                            MODERN TORTURE
+
+
+All the barbarity practiced by the Holy Inquisition to subjugate
+heretics, the clever tortures of the medieval rack, Ottoman impalement,
+the torture of the thousand pieces, the red-hot molten lead, poured
+down the throat through a funnel--all the old science of martyrdom
+still exists to this day, cloaked under clever disguises. Humanity is
+ever the same cruel destroyer of itself, either in centuries before or
+after Christ. The form of things changes; but the substance remains the
+same.
+
+As proof I here adduce the avatar of the ancient tortures: the
+postman’s job.
+
+This torture is equal to the wheel, the bonfire, strangulation, the
+strappado, the bronze bull, impalement, the cat-o’-nine-tails, the
+pillory, the hydraulic whipping-post; the difference being that these
+machines killed with relative rapidity, while the postman’s job
+prolongs the agony of the victim for years.
+
+A man goes into the service of postman in the following manner: the
+Government, at the hateful suggestion of some political “boss,”--the
+modern substitute of the “servant” of the inquisition,--appoints a
+citizen mail-carrier between two neighboring towns not served by a
+railroad.
+
+The innocent man sees both honor and business in the case: it is
+an honor to become one of the crowded phalanx of budget-devouring
+parasites who patiently digest the country; it is a good business to
+taste at the end of each month a fixed salary and to have, nicely
+prepared for the future, the soft bed of a pension.
+
+Here we see the difference between the ominous medieval times and the
+super-excellency of the democracy of the present day.
+
+Absolutism brutally seized the victims and without warning or
+“habeas-corpus,” murdered them; democracy works with the cunning
+of a hypocrite, sets traps, sticks a slice of orange inside and
+treacherously waits for the famished bird to fall into the noose, of
+his own free will. It wants chance victims and does not choose. This is
+called art, artfully done....
+
+The man having been appointed, at first does not perceive his
+misfortune. Only at the end of a month or two he begins to have his
+doubts; doubts that gradually become a certainty, a horrible certainty
+that he has been impaled on the hard back of the worst plug in the
+neighborhood, with five, six, seven leagues of torture before him to
+consume per day, with the mail-bag behind him on the horse’s back.
+These leagues are the pricks of the instrument of torture. For ordinary
+mortals a league is a league; the measure of a distance beginning here
+and ending there. The traveler, having covered the distance, arrives
+and is satisfied. The leagues of the postman, hardly are they over,
+return again “da capo” as in music. Having gone over six (suppose the
+route to be one of six leagues), he sees them rise up again in front
+of him on his return. He must do them and undo them. Penelope’s web,
+rock of Sisyphus, and between the going and coming, the bad digestion
+of a warmed-up dinner and a bad night; and thus it continues for a
+month, a year, two, three, five, as long as he still has buttocks and
+his horse has loins.
+
+When he meets a traveler on his way he becomes green with envy: that
+one will soon “arrive,” whereas, for the postman, this verb is an
+ironical derision. He dismounts with difficulty, worn out, his flesh
+on fire at the end of the thirty-six thousand metres of the weary way.
+He eats a plate of badly cooked beans, and takes a wretched little
+nap. The dawn of the next day stretches out before him and by way of
+good-morning, the same accursed thirty-six thousand meters of the
+evening before, now lengthened out the other way....
+
+Soon the sore animal weakens and gives out. Now the rider must climb
+the hills on foot. He has no means with which to buy another nag. His
+salary is spent for corn and a closely cropped pasture for the horse,
+and brine for the baths and other remedies for the bruises of both
+rider and ridden. There is nothing left for clothes.
+
+The State awards--the same State that maintains fat bureaucratic
+caterpillars at a _conto_ and Congressional parrots at a hundred _mil
+réis_ per day,--awards him, this generous and wealthy State ...
+one hundred _mil réis_ per month. That is, one _real_ for
+every nine yards of torment. Twenty _réis_ they pay him for
+three hundred and thirty meters of torture. That is, one kilometer of
+martyrdom for sixty _réis_. Cheaper pain would be impossible....
+
+The post-made-man begins to shrink from fatigue and hunger. He gets
+thin, his cheeks sink in, his legs become brackets within which dwells
+the belly of the wretched horse.
+
+Besides the physiological, economical and social calamities, he is also
+showered with meteorological woes. The inclement weather does not spare
+him. In summer the sun roasts him pitilessly, as nuts are roasted in an
+oven; if it rains, he misses not a drop; by the end of May, when the
+cold weather begins, benumbed like a subject of the Czar in Siberia,
+he devours the infernal leagues. On Saint Bartholomew’s day,[2] as he
+hangs like grim death to the mane of the lean mare, it is a miracle
+that the devilish wind does not tumble them both over a precipice.
+
+His patrons, the Government, take it for granted that he is made
+of iron and his buttocks of chromate of steel; that the roads are
+asphalted streets lined with plush; that the weather is a permanent
+blue sky with balmy breezes bent upon blowing the sweet perfume of
+flowering balsam over the travelers.
+
+It still takes it for granted that the hundred _mil réis_[3] of
+salary is a regal remuneration, to make one smack one’s lips. And, in
+these angelical suppositions, when financial crises come and economy
+must be considered, it cuts down five or ten _mil réis_ from
+his meagre salary so that there may be some margin by which some
+brother-in-law, graduated in medicine, can go to Europe on a commission
+to study the “zygomatic influence of the solar perihelion on the
+Zarathustrian system of Latin democracies.”
+
+And thus the army of postmen, more and more emaciated every day, head
+over heels in debt, covered with bruises, at the mercy of the December
+sun or the benumbing June drizzles, trots, trots, unceasingly, up
+hill and down dale, through mud-holes and sand-banks, whirlpools and
+slippery slopes, shaken up by the miserable mount that from so much
+suffering, poor thing, has lost all semblance of a horse. Its loins are
+but an open wound; the ribs a lathwork. This sorry caricature of the
+noble _Equus_, finally one day falls exhausted and famished in the
+midst of the journey.
+
+The postman throws the harness and the mail-bag over his shoulders
+and finishes the journey on foot. However, as on that day he arrives
+late, the post-office agent reports to headquarters regarding his
+“non-compliance with the rules.” Headquarters get moving; a paper
+circulates about several rooms, where, comfortably sprawled out in
+expensive armchairs, the stout bureaucracy converses about German
+spies. After a long voyage the documents reach an office where a
+well filled-out fellow, with good color, is seated at a mahogany desk
+smoking a confiscated cigar.
+
+This one earns eight hundred _mil réis_ per month, is son of
+someone, brother-in-law, father-in-law or son-in-law of someone
+else, begins work at eleven in the morning and leaves at three with
+an interval in between to take a cup of chocolate at the café on the
+corner. The fatted pig glances over the paper with lazy, listless eyes
+and grunts:
+
+“These postmen! What vagabonds they are!”
+
+And signs the dismissal of the culprit for the good of the public
+service.
+
+The poor tortured man, turned out, without health, without a horse,
+without flesh, full of debts, his insides dislocated by the shaking up
+on horseback, finds himself surrounded by creditors, hungry as vultures
+around a slaughterhouse. As he is completely cleaned out, he is unable
+to pay any of them and, therefore, becomes known as a swindler.
+
+“He seemed an honest man and nevertheless robbed me of five measures
+of corn,” says the grocer, a fat man from Calabria, who became rich
+circulating bogus money.
+
+“He borrowed one hundred _mil réis_ from me for a horse, at a
+small friendly interest (three per cent per month) five years ago, and
+all he could pay me was the little premium and the harness as part
+payment. What a thief!” said the money-lender, partner of the other in
+the circulation of bogus money.
+
+The dry-goods shop lamented the loss of a pair of cotton trousers sold
+on credit to the postman some time ago. The drug store bewailed two
+pounds of adulterated Epsom salts. And the martyr, steeped in insults,
+only sees one way out of it: to take to his feet and run ... run to
+any country where he is unknown and can die in peace.
+
+Thus the modern torture of the post service, besides drying up the
+flesh of a human creature free from crime, gives him a beautiful moral
+death.
+
+And all this so that no news will be lacking to the learned people of
+the little towns, unserved by railroads; for they must get the daily
+paper and learn about the knifings between Spread-foot and Black Shirt,
+the cheese stolen by Little Bahiano from Manoel of the grocery-store,
+the novel translated from Georges Ohnet, the country’s rescue from
+national thieving, the spouting of Leagues for this and that, the
+discovery of spies where there is nothing to spy, polyculture, zebu
+oxen, illiteracy, the falsehoods of the International News Agency and
+all the nonsense that sprouts from the soil of this wonderful country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Colonel Evandro’s policy in Itaóca fell through when, at a certain
+election, the rival candidate Fidencio, also Colonel, hoisted the
+quotation of votes of those who wore neck-ties, to five hundred _mil
+réis_ and of those who went bare-foot to two suits of clothes and
+a hat besides. The first act of the winner was to turn out everyone
+turnoutable connected with public employment. Among those dismissed
+were the post-office employes, including the postman, who was replaced
+at the suggestion of the Government, by Izé Biriba.
+
+Said Biriba was a human snail, slow in movement and obtuse in ideas,
+with two tremendous preoccupations in life: politics and his forelock.
+The forelock was a stubborn tangled lock of hair always falling over
+his forehead, and so obstinate that he spent half the day raising his
+left hand to his forehead in an automatic movement to push back the
+rebellious lock. It is needless to say what the politics consisted of.
+
+Forelock and politics, both combined, took up all of his time so that
+Biriba found no spare moment in which to work his farm, which finally,
+gnawed by the mortgage-bug, fell into the hands of a wily Italian.
+
+Then he started a bar that failed. While he pushed back his forelock,
+the customers stole the tips from him; and during the political talks,
+the men of his party drank cooling drinks and ate fish-cakes in
+celebration of the future victory while they spouted sarcastic remarks
+against those in power.
+
+Besides brushing back his forelock, Biriba had the habit of saying,
+“Yes, Sir,” used as a comma, semicolon, colon and period in reply to
+all the nonsensical remarks of his companions; and sometimes, through
+habit, when the customer ceased talking and began to eat, Biriba would
+utter a series of “Yes, Sirs,” in accompaniment to the chewing of the
+stolen cake.
+
+At the time of the other man’s fall and the ascent of his own faction,
+he was reduced to the conspicuous position of an electoral pawn.
+
+He worked like a nigger at the election. The bosses gave him the
+hardest jobs: to hunt out country voters hidden away in mountain
+fastnesses, to do commerce with their consciences, to bargain prices
+of votes, exchange them for mangy mares and prove to the unbelieving,
+by arguments whispered in their ears, that “the Government is on your
+side.”
+
+After the victory Biriba felt for the first time in his life entire joy
+of heart, head and stomach.
+
+To win! Oh, nectar! Oh incomparable ambrosia!
+
+Our friend Biriba fully enjoyed the gifts of the gods. At last the
+darkness of his life of misery was dispelled by the happy dawn! To eat
+plentifully, to have the upper hand ... delights of victory!
+
+What would the boss give him?
+
+In anticipation of the prize in prospect he spent his time dreaming
+rosy dreams until his appointment as postman was announced. With no
+inclination for that work he tried to resist, to ask for more; however,
+in a conference with his chief, the objections which rose to his lips
+were transmuted into the habitual “Yes, Sir,” so that the Colonel was
+convinced that his ideal had been realized.
+
+“You see, Biriba, what loyalty is worth. You get a fine job! Regino is
+to be agent and you postman.”
+
+The most he could complain of was that he had no horse.
+
+“That can be managed,” said the Colonel promptly; “I have an Arab mare,
+single-footer, thoroughbred, worth two hundred _mil réis_; but
+since it is for you, you can have her at half price. The money? That’s
+a minor matter. Borrow it from friend Leandro. All can be arranged,
+man!”
+
+The arrangement was that Biriba bought the trotting mare for double the
+price she was worth, with money raised at three per cent per month from
+said Leandro, who was merely the creature of Fidencio.
+
+Thus, by a master stroke, the sly boss won interest on the worst nag on
+his farm, besides holding the poor idiot, made postman, the halter of
+gratitude.
+
+Biriba began his work: six leagues to do today and undo tomorrow,
+without any rest except the thirty-first day of every other month.
+
+If only he had simply to devour the leagues in company of the limp
+mail-bags. His work, however, did not turn out so easy. As Itaóca
+was only a little place perched on a ridge of the mountain range and
+lacking everything, his political friends were always looking him up to
+order something from the city. When it was already time to leave, the
+unscrupulous people would appear with lists of notions or messages sent
+by little darkies.
+
+“Missus says will you buy three spools of number 50 thread, a paper of
+needles, a roll of white tape, five packages of fine hairpins and if
+there is a penny left over will you bring a candy for Master Juquinha?”
+
+Very often all these articles could be found in Itaóca; a trifle
+dearer, however, and therefore the object in ordering them elsewhere
+was to save the penny for the candy.
+
+“Yes, sir, yes, sir!...”
+
+No other words left his lips, although the continued abuse exasperated
+him. Besides the small and less troublesome orders there were other
+large ones, such as leading a harnessed horse to Mr. So-and-so who was
+to arrive on such and such a day, to accompany Mr. Etcetera’s wife, and
+other missions of like nature. Whenever Tiburcia, the collector’s black
+cook, went on a holiday rest to the city, Biriba was detailed to take
+her.
+
+It was so I met him, protecting the Amazon. On the way to Itaóca,
+half way there, I met a man mounted on the most dilapidated mare that
+ever I saw; behind him he carried mail bags and several smaller bags,
+besides a new broom stuck into the harness with the straw part up. He
+had stopped in a stupid attitude, holding by the bridle a little horse
+carrying a side-saddle. I approached him asking for a light. Having lit
+the cigarette, I inquired who was riding the other horse.
+
+“I am accompanying Dona Engracia who is mid-wife in Itaóca; she
+dismounted for a moment and....”
+
+I heard a rustle behind me: out of the woods came a large ruddy woman,
+her skirts stiffly starched and on her head a little cap of the time
+of His Most Faithful Majesty.... Not to embarrass her I went on my
+way, but not without looking out of the corners of my eyes to enjoy
+the postman’s difficulty in placing on the little horse the mid-wife’s
+generous avoirdupois.
+
+And the scoldings....
+
+“Mr. Biriba, it wasn’t number 40 thread I ordered. You are stupid!”
+
+When the material was not right:
+
+“Couldn’t you see that the calico would fade, you ass?”
+
+What hurt him above all was to carry for the execrable people of the
+opposition. The Colonel of the opposite party, neutral or secret
+opponent, did not hesitate to take advantage, through the influence of
+a third party, of the martyr’s good faith.
+
+Biriba recalled painfully a thoroughbred goat that gave him great
+trouble on the way, and several butts besides; finally upon his arrival
+he discovered that the animal was destined for the enemy. Everybody
+received news of the incident with laughter and jest.
+
+“This Biriba is an idiot! To think of his bringing the opposite party’s
+goat! Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+This and other happenings embittered him. He became thin and yellow.
+
+The poor mare lost all shape of a horse. Her loins became sway-back so
+that the rider’s feet nearly touched the ground. Biriba sank when he
+mounted. His head nearly came on a level with the mare’s haunches and
+ears. Horribly sore, the miserable animal’s eyes were always filled
+with tears of pain. All this suffering, however, instead of moving the
+hard hearts of the people of Itaóca, amused them and was the cause of
+endless ridicule and idiotic jokes about the “postman of the Sorry
+Aspect and his Bucephalus,” as they were nicknamed by a town wag....
+
+Scrofulous as they, only one other creature, Cunegundes. Cunegundes was
+a dog without owner, covered with mange, that strayed about the town
+avoiding flies and kicks. What should they do but change Cunegundes’
+name to Biriba! The scoundrels!
+
+And soon the Government contributed to the torture by deciding to cut
+down the salaries of the postmen in order to save itself on a certain
+occasion from financial difficulty.... And it did so.
+
+Clothes threadbare. At the beginning of the rainy season a charitable
+soul presented Biriba with an old rain-coat; however, the first
+downpour showed the recipient that the coat leaked like a sieve, thus
+increasing his difficulty with an overweight of cloth that absorbed
+several quarts of water.
+
+Biriba lost his patience and grumbled.
+
+Alas! The boss soon heard of it and called him to account.
+
+“Is it true that you are complaining of the job we gave you? Perhaps
+you would rather be elected senator or Vice-President? A shabby thing
+that went about nearly dying of hunger, due to our generosity obtains a
+Federal post, with a right to a pension, a fairly good salary ... (here
+Biriba coughed out a “Yes, Sir”) finds everything easy, receives a good
+animal and still complains? What does Your Excellency desire, then?”
+
+Biriba took his courage in his hands and declared that he only desired
+one thing: his dismissal. He was ill, worn out, threatened with the
+loss of the mare and his haunches at any moment. He wanted to change
+his mode of living.
+
+“So one’s mode of life can be changed offhand like that? You want to
+abandon your friends: And partisan discipline, what of that, my dear
+idiot?”
+
+Biriba’s dismissal would suit no one.
+
+Who could be of greater service? They recalled the former postmen, rude
+fellows, unwilling even to bring a paper of needles to anyone. He must
+not leave. He must sacrifice himself for Itaóca.
+
+However the daily torture of having his insides shaken up along seven
+leagues ended by loosening the cement of his political loyalty. The
+martyr’s eyes were opened. He remembered with longing the ominous days
+of Colonel Evandro, the delights of the bar and even the degrading
+cat’s paw service of electioneering days. Things had grown worse
+undoubtedly after the victory.
+
+This free examination of conscience, believe me, was the beginning
+of the downfall of Colonel Fidencio. Biriba, the staunch support,
+was rotting at the base. He would fall and with him the roof of that
+political shanty. In his harassed soul the viper of treason made its
+nest....
+
+As the new election was approaching, new victory only meant a new
+three years of martyrdom for the postman. Biriba confabulated with his
+mare and decided that the salvation of both lay in defeat. He would
+be dismissed and, veteran and martyr of Fidencio’s party, he would
+continue to warrant the support of the party without suffering through
+his bruised haunches the hateful contact of the seven daily hours of
+shake-up.
+
+He decided to betray.
+
+On the eve of the election, Fidencio commissioned him to bring an
+important paper from the city for the counting up of votes. Don’t know
+what it was. A paper. The word “paper,” said in a mysterious tone,
+means “something.”...
+
+I know nothing of elections. I couldn’t say positively if a “paper”
+that isn’t just paper has the power to decide these social ills. All
+I know is that everything depended on the “paper,” so much so that
+Biriba’s mission was a secret one. Fidencio emphasized the importance
+of the commission--the greatest proof of confidence ever given by him
+to any electoral pawn.
+
+“Take care! Our fate is in your hands. There’s confidence for you, hey?”
+
+Biriba set out; he received the paper and started to return. Half way
+he took a side path which led to an old negro’s hut. He loosened the
+mare and began to talk with the gorilla. Night fell and Biriba remained
+where he was. The next day dawned and Biriba still kept quiet. Ten days
+passed thus. At the end of the ten days he harnessed the mare, mounted
+and went off to Itaóca as though nothing had happened.
+
+His appearance caused astonishment. All efforts to find him during the
+day of the election and those following had been in vain; they had
+given him up as lost, eaten by the panthers, he, mare, mail-bag and
+“paper.” Now to see him appear alone and calm, made mouths open and the
+whole village gape. What had happened?
+
+Biriba met all questions with an idiotic expression. He explained
+nothing. Knew nothing. Cataleptic sleep? Witchery? He did not
+understand what had happened. To him he seemed to have left the day
+before and to have come back today.
+
+Everyone was astonished and looked foolish. Fidencio was in bed with
+brain-fever and delirious. He had lost the election completely. “Out
+and out defeat,” said Evandro’s followers, setting off whistling
+fire-works.
+
+In consequence of the inexplicable eclipse of the postman, the
+exominous Evandro assumed leadership. The slaughter began. Everything
+savouring of Fidencio was turned out.
+
+However the new broom of dismissals spared ... Biriba! The new chief
+approached him and said:
+
+“I threw out all the trash, Biriba, except you. You are the only saving
+grace of the Fidencio tribe. Rest easy, your little place will not be
+taken from you, even though the heavens fall!...”
+
+Biriba, for the last time in Itaóca murmured his, “Yes, Sir.” That
+night he kissed his mare’s nozzle and went forth on his tip-toes. He
+reached the high-road, disappeared, and no one ever saw him again....
+
+
+
+
+                           THE PENITENT WAG
+
+
+Francisco Teixeira de Souza Pontes, bastard scion of a Souza Pontes
+family, rich planters of Barreiros and owners of thirty thousand
+“arrobas”[4] of coffee, at thirty-two years of age began to take life
+seriously.
+
+A wag by nature, up to that time he had lived off his comic strain and
+thereby reaped board, lodging, clothing and all else. His currency
+consisted of grimaces, jokes, anecdotes about Englishmen and everything
+that tickles the facial muscles of the animal that laughs, commonly
+called man, provoking hilarity or raising hearty guffaws.
+
+He knew So-and-So’s “Encyclopedia of Laughter and Mirth” by heart--the
+most mirthless creature God ever made, but such was Pontes’ ability that
+he could turn the most feeble jokes into excellent witticisms, to the
+delight of his hearers.
+
+He had a knack for imitating man and beast. The entire gamut of a dog’s
+voice, from the baying of the hound chasing the wild pig, to howling at
+the moon and all other sounds, growling or barking, were imitated by
+him to such perfection as to deceive both dogs and moon.
+
+He also grunted like a pig, cackled like a hen, croaked like a toad,
+scolded like an old woman, whimpered like a baby, enjoined silence like
+a Representative or speechified like a patriot at a street meeting.
+What two-legged or four-legged hum of voices did he not mimic to
+perfection, as long as he had before him an audience well equipped with
+those “muscles of mirth” invented by our talented authoress Albertina
+Bertha?
+
+On other occasions he reverted to prehistoric times. When his
+hearers were not over ignorant, drawing upon his own modicum of
+learning, he would reconstruct for their intellectual delectation the
+paleontological roars of extinct brutes, love-growls of mammoths to
+their mates or the yells of the _stegosaurus_ upon seeing hairy
+_homos_ perched upon tree-ferns, according to the laughable
+descriptive science of Barros Barreto.
+
+If he ran across a group of friends talking on a street corner, he
+would come quietly up to them and slap the calf of the nearest leg. It
+was funny to see the frightened jump and hear the nervous “Get out!”
+of the unsuspecting victim, followed by the hilarious laughter of the
+others and also of Pontes who had his own mode of laughter, boisterous
+and musical--music after Offenbach. Pontes’ laugh was an imitation of
+the natural and spontaneous laughter of the human species, the only one
+that laughs, with exception of the drunken fox,--and passed abruptly
+without transition into a seriousness irresistibly comic.
+
+In all his gestures and manner, in his way of walking, reading, eating;
+in the most trivial details of life, this man possessed of the devil,
+differed from the others in that he made prodigious fun of everything.
+
+This reached such a point that it was only necessary for him to open
+his mouth or raise his hand, for humanity to writhe in laughter. The
+sight of him was enough. As soon as he appeared, all faces beamed; if
+he made a spontaneous gesture, laughter could be heard, if he opened
+his mouth some shrieked, others loosened their belts so as to laugh
+better. If he spoke, good Lord! one heard shrieks of laughter, yells,
+squeaks, chokes, sniffling and tremendous catching of breath.
+
+“He beats the devil, this Pontes!”
+
+“Hold on, man, you’ll make me gag!”
+
+And when the wit tried to look innocent and idiotic, remarking:
+
+“But what did I do? I never opened my mouth....”
+
+“Ha, ha, ha!” everyone laughed, their jaws aching, weeping
+spasmodically with uncontrollable hilarity.
+
+As time passed, the mere mention of his name was enough to provoke
+merriment. If anyone pronounced the word “Pontes,” the gun-cotton of
+risibles by which man raises himself above animals who do not laugh,
+would instantly ignite.
+
+Thus he lived until the age of Christ in a smiling parable, laughing
+and provoking laughter, without a serious thought,--a vagabond life
+that exchanges grimaces for dinners and pays small bills with ponderous
+jokes. A merchant whom he had cheated once said to him, amidst bursts
+of spluttering laughter:
+
+“You amuse me, at least, and are not like Major Carapuça who cheats
+with a face like a wooden Indian.”
+
+That unstamped receipt troubled our wag not a little; but as the bill
+amounted to two dollars, it was well worth the trick. However, the
+memory of it remained, like a pin-prick to his self-respect. Following
+this came other pin-pricks, some shoved in with less force, others
+straight through.
+
+One wearies of everything. Sick of such a life, the tireless joker
+began to dream of the joy of being taken seriously, of speaking and
+being listened to without the play of facial muscles, of gesticulating
+without disturbing human dignity, of crossing a street without hearing
+a chorus of “Here comes Pontes!” in the tone of those who check
+laughter or prepare themselves for a hearty guffaw.
+
+Attempting reaction, Pontes tried to be serious--a disaster! Pontes
+solemnly changed his tactics and adopted English humorism. Formerly he
+was amusing as a clown, now he took the part of Tony.
+
+The enormous success which everyone supposed to be a new phase of his
+comic strain, threw the penitent wag into despair. Was it possible that
+he could never follow any other path in life than that one, now so
+hateful to him? A clown then, everlastingly a clown against his will?
+
+But the life of a grown man requires seriousness, gravity and even
+soberness, unnecessary in youth.
+
+Even the most humble government employment, an office of alderman,
+requires that immobility of countenance, characteristic of laughterless
+idiocy. One cannot conceive a smiling alderman. Rabelais’ phrase is
+lacking in one exception: laughter is the prerogative of the human
+species,--aldermen excepted.
+
+As the years passed, reflection matured, self-respect grew and the free
+dinners tasted bitter to him. The coining of joke currency became very
+difficult; it no longer was cast with the former light-heartedness; now
+it was done as a livelihood, not in thoughtless merriment of the days
+past. He mentally compared himself to a circus clown, old and ailing,
+obliged through poverty to transform rheumatism into comical faces
+required by the paying public.
+
+He began to flee from mankind and spent months in the study of the
+transition necessary to obtain an honest employment for his activities.
+He thought of going into business, commerce, the administration of a
+plantation, the setting up of a bar--anything was preferable to the
+comic idiocy adopted up to the present.
+
+One day, his plans fully matured, he decided to change his way of
+living. He looked up a friendly tradesman and frankly told him of
+his intentions to reform, finally asking him for a place in his
+business-house, if only that of sweeper. He hardly finished telling
+his plans when the Portuguese and all the cashiers who looked on at
+a distance awaiting the outcome, writhed in a hearty guffaw, highly
+delighted.
+
+“What a good joke! First class! Ha! ha! ha! Then you ... ha! ha! ha!
+You’ll give me a pain, man! If it’s on account of that little bill for
+cigarettes, rest easy, I’m already paid for it! Ha! ha! ha! Pontes
+has.... Do you hear that one, Jose? Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+And the clerks, customers, the loafers and even the passers-by stopped
+on the sidewalk to hear the joke, and their laughter sounded like
+policemen’s rattles as they shook until their sides ached.
+
+The wretched creature, bewildered and perfectly serious, tried his best
+to dispel the misunderstanding:
+
+“I am in earnest and you have no right to laugh. For God’s sake, don’t
+make fun of a poor unfortunate who asks for work and not laughter.”
+
+The merchant loosened his belt.
+
+“You mean it? Pshaw! Ha! ha! ha! Look here, Pontes, you....”
+
+Pontes left him in the middle of his sentence and went forth with his
+soul tortured by despair and rage. It was too much. Then everyone
+spurned him?
+
+He applied at other houses in the town, explained as best he could,
+implored. The case was judged unanimously as one of the best jokes of
+the “incorrigible” wag and many persons commented upon it with the
+usual observation:
+
+“He is still the same! he’ll never behave, that devil of a fellow, and
+he is no longer young....”
+
+Barred from trade, he turned his attention towards the farms. He looked
+up an old planter who had dismissed his overseer and stated his case.
+The Colonel, after listening attentively to his reasons, ending up with
+the offer to take on the job as overseer on the farm, exploded in a fit
+of laughter.
+
+“Pontes overseer! He! he! he!”
+
+“But....”
+
+“Let me laugh, man, you don’t hear this sort of thing in the country
+very often. He! he! he! Splendid! I have always said there was no wit
+like Pontes! None!”
+
+And shouting within doors:
+
+“Maria, come and hear Pontes’ latest. He! he! he!”
+
+That day the unfortunate wag wept. He understood that one cannot
+destroy overnight what has taken years to form. His reputation as a
+funny man, as a joker, as inimitable, as monumental, was built of far
+too good mortar and cement to crumble so soon.
+
+However, it was necessary to change his mode of life and Pontes began
+to reflect on government employment, the most convenient and only
+possible master in this abstract case, because it neither knows how
+to laugh, nor does it know from close observation the cells whence
+laughter arises. This master, and this one alone, would take him
+seriously--the road to salvation, therefore, lay in that direction.
+
+He studied the possibility of a post-office agency, notary office,
+collector’s office and others. Weighing well the pros and cons, trumps
+and suits, he decided upon the choice of a federal collector’s office,
+the occupant of which, a Major Bentes, being old and suffering from
+heart trouble, was not expected to last long. His aneurism was the talk
+of the town, the final break being expected at any moment.
+
+Pontes’ trump card was a relative in Rio, a rich man on the way to
+influence in politics, should a change of government occur. Pontes
+chased after him and worked so hard to interest him in his claim that
+the man finally dismissed him with a sure promise.
+
+“Go in peace, for when the affair breaks out here and your collector
+breaks down there, no one will laugh at you any more. Go, and advise me
+of the man’s death without waiting for the body to cool.”
+
+Pontes returned radiant with hope and patiently waited for subsequent
+events, with one eye on politics and the other on the provident
+aneurism.
+
+Finally the crisis came; ministries fell, others rose to power and
+among these a negotiating politician, partner of the relative. Half the
+battle was over, the other half still to be fought.
+
+Unfortunately the Major’s health came to a standstill without any
+visible signs of a rapid decline. His aneurism was, according to the
+doctors who killed by allopathy, a serious thing, which could break
+with the slightest effort; but the cautious old man was in no hurry to
+leave a life of comfort, for a better world, so he fooled the illness
+with an ultra-methodical regime. If a violent effort would kill him
+then such an effort should not be made.
+
+Pontes, already almost owner of the prize, became impatient with the
+swaying balance of his calculations. How could he clear the way of that
+obstacle? He consulted in Chernovitz’s medical manual on aneurisms;
+learned it by heart. He inquired here and there about all that had
+been said and written on the matter and became more familiar with the
+subject than ever Dr. Ioduret, a local doctor, who, we may truthfully
+say, knew nothing at all.
+
+The apple of science thus eaten, he was led to the temptation of
+killing the man, obliging him to burst the aneurism. An effort would
+kill him? All right, Souza Pontes would lead him to make that effort.
+
+“A hearty guffaw is an effort,” he satanically philosophized to
+himself, “so a guffaw can kill. Well, I know how to provoke laughter.”
+
+Many days passed, lost to the world in a mental dialogue with Satan.
+Crime? No! in what code is to be found the provocation of laughter as
+a crime? If the man died of this the fault would be due to the bad
+condition of his great artery.
+
+The rascal’s head turned into a field of combat where his “plan” fought
+a duel against all objections raised by conscience. His bitter ambition
+served as judge of the contest and heaven knows how often said judge
+prevaricated, led by scandalous partiality for one of the combatants.
+
+As was expected, Satan won and Pontes reappeared before the world a
+little thinner, with dark rings under his eyes but with a strange
+light of victorious decision in his expression. Anyone observing him
+closely would note his nervous manner; however, close observation was
+not a prevailing virtue among his countrymen and furthermore, Pontes’
+various states of mind were of no importance because Pontes....
+
+“Well, Pontes was just Pontes!”
+
+The future employe proceeded to plan a careful campaign. In the first
+place it was necessary to approach the Major, a reserved man and not
+fond of jests; to ingratiate himself into his home life, study his
+whims and pet habits until he could discover in what part of his body
+lay the weak spot.
+
+He began to frequent the receiver’s office assiduously, under various
+pretexts, sometimes for stamps, sometimes for information regarding
+taxes; everything was an excuse for sly and clever prattle meant to
+undermine the old man’s severity.
+
+He would also go on other people’s business for the paying of excise
+taxes, taking out permits and other little matters. He became of great
+use to the friends who had business with the exchequer.
+
+The Major was surprised at such assiduity and said so, but Pontes
+evaded the question, turning it into a joke, and persevered in a well
+calculated conclusion to let time round off the sharp corners of the
+sick man.
+
+Within two months Bentes had become used to that “chipmunk” as he
+called him, who on the whole seemed a good sort of fellow, sincere,
+eager to be of use and above all, harmless. From asking him a favor
+on a very busy day, then another and still a third, and finally
+considering him as a sort of adjunct to the department, was only a
+step.
+
+For certain commissions there was no one like him. Such earnestness!
+Such subtleness! Such tact!
+
+One day the Major, reprimanding the clerk, held up his diplomacy as an
+example.
+
+“You great idiot! go learn with Pontes who has a knack for everything,
+and is amusing besides.”
+
+That day he invited Pontes to Dinner.
+
+Pontes’ soul was filled with joy: the fortress had opened its doors to
+him.
+
+That dinner was the beginning of a series where the “chipmunk,” now an
+indispensable factotum, found a first-class field of action for his
+tactics.
+
+Major Bentes, however, possessed one invulnerable point: he never
+laughed, he limited his hilarity to ironical smiles. A joke that would
+make the other guests rise from the table smothering their mouths in
+their table-napkins, would barely elicit a smile from him. And if the
+joke were not of the very best, the bored collector pitilessly guyed
+the story-teller.
+
+“That’s old as the hills, Pontes, I remember reading it in Laemmert’s
+Almanack for 1850.”
+
+Pontes would smile with a vanquished look; but would inwardly say,--if
+that one wasn’t appreciated another would be.
+
+All his sagacity was focussed on the discovery of the Major’s weak
+point. Each man has a preference for a certain class of humor or wit.
+One delights in wanton jests of rotund friars. Another regales himself
+with the boisterous good-humoured German joke. Still another would
+give a year of his life for the Gaul’s spicy vulgarity. The Brazilian
+adores a joke which exposes the rank stupidity of the Portuguese--the
+most convenient way our people have found to demonstrate by contrast,
+their own intelligence.
+
+But how about the Major? Why did he not laugh at the English, German,
+French or Brazilian jokes? Which did he prefer?
+
+Systematic observation and methodical exclusion of the classes of humor
+already found inefficient, led Pontes to discover the weak point of
+his stern adversary. The Major delighted in tales of Englishmen and
+friars. But they must be stories of both together. Separate, they were
+a failure. Just an old man’s crankiness. At the appearance of red-faced
+Britishers, with cork helmets, checked clothes, formidable boots and
+pipes, side by side with rotund friars doting upon a hogshead of wine
+and revelling in feminine flesh, the Major would open his mouth and
+suspend his chewing like a child enticed by candy; and when the comic
+climax was reached, he would laugh, but without exaggeration enough to
+upset the equilibrium of his circulation.
+
+Pontes with infinite patience bet on that class of fun and stuck to
+it. He increased the program, the spiciness, the dose of malice and
+systematically bombarded the Major’s great artery with the fruits of
+his clever manipulation.
+
+When the story was a long one, rendered so because the narrator added
+flourishes with a view to hiding the final climax and heightening the
+effect, the old man would become highly interested and during the
+artful pauses would ask for explanations or continuation:
+
+“And the rascally Englishman?... And what happened next?... Did Mr.
+John call for help?”
+
+Although the fatal peal of laughter was long in coming, the future
+collector did not despair, pinning his faith on the fable of the
+pitcher that went so often to the well that it finally broke.
+
+The calculation was well made. Psychology, as well as Lent, was on his
+side.
+
+One day, Carnival having passed, the Major gathered his friends about
+an enormous stuffed fish, a present from the clerk.
+
+Carnival sport had enlivened the hearts of the guests as well as of the
+host who on that day was pleased with himself and the whole world, as
+though he had seen the blue-bird.
+
+When the fish was brought in, the Major’s eyes sparkled; it was
+well worth all the bottled aperitives and reflected in all faces an
+epicurean tenderness. Fine fish was the Major’s delight, especially
+when cooked by Gertrude. And for that dinner Gertrude had excelled in a
+seasoning that transcended all culinary art and soared to the height of
+the most exquisite poetry. What fish! Vatel could have signed it with
+the pen of impotence dipped in the ink of envy, said the clerk, well up
+as a reader of Brillat-Savarin and other authorities on good things to
+eat.
+
+Between swallows of rich wine the fish was eaten with religious rites.
+No one dared break the silence of that bromatological beatitude.
+
+Pontes foresaw the opportune moment to play his game. He had brought
+full-cocked a case of an Englishman, his wife and two bearded friars,
+an anecdote built from the best grey cells of his brain, rendered
+ever more perfect through long nights of insomnia. It had been kept
+in ambush for days awaiting the moment in which everything would
+contribute towards the greatest possible effect.
+
+It was the last hope of the villain, his last cartridge. If it failed
+to go off he would decidedly blow out his brains. He saw that it was
+impossible to manipulate a more ingenious torpedo. Should the aneurism
+resist the shock, then the aneurism was a bluff, the great artery a
+fiction, Chernovitz mere twaddle, medical science worthless and Dr.
+Ioduret an ass and he, Pontes, the dullest, most insipid creature under
+the sun, therefore unworthy to live.
+
+Pontes meditated thus, alluring the poor victim with the eyes of
+psychology when the Major met him halfway and winked his left eye at
+him.
+
+“The time has come,” thought the scoundrel and in the most natural way
+he took up the little bottle of sauce as though casually and began to
+read the label:
+
+“Perrins, Lea & Perrins. I wonder if this might be a relation of that
+Lord Perrins, who baffled the two bearded friars?”
+
+Inebriated by the seductions of the fish the Major’s eyes lit up
+coveteously, greedy for a spicy tale:
+
+“Two bearded friars and a Lord! The story must be A-1! Fire away,
+Chipmunk.”
+
+And chewing mechanically he became absorbed in the fatal story.
+
+The anecdote ran on insidiously in a natural strain, told with a
+master’s art, firm and sure, with strategic progression, showing real
+genius, until it nearly reached the climax. Around about this point the
+entanglement so held the attention of the poor old man that he remained
+motionless, with lips parted and an olive, stuck on his fork in mid
+air. A half smile,--a detained smile, the spark of laughter which is
+the preparation for a peal of laughter, lit up his face.
+
+Pontes hesitated. He foresaw the break of the artery. Conscience
+cramped his tongue, but only for an instant. Pontes let conscience
+quiet down again and pulled the trigger.
+
+For the first time in his life Major Antonio Pereira da Silva Bentes
+broke into a hearty peal of laughter; frank, resounding,--which could
+be heard all down the street; a peal of laughter equal to that of
+Teufelsdröckh before John Paul Richter. The first and the last, because
+in the midst of it his astonished guests saw him fall face-downwards
+over his plate, while at the same time a gush of blood reddened the
+table-cloth.
+
+The assassin rose hallucinated and making the most of the confusion,
+slipped out onto the street, a modern Cain. He hid himself at home,
+locked in his room, his teeth chattering the night through, in a cold
+sweat. The least noise filled him with terror: was it the Police?
+
+Weeks later he began to get over that soul-fright which everyone
+attributed to sorrow over the death of his friend. Notwithstanding, he
+had ever before his eyes the same sight: the old man fallen over his
+plate, spurting blood while the echo of his last peal of laughter still
+rang in the air.
+
+While in this deplorable condition, Pontes received a letter from the
+relative in Rio. Among other things the holder of the trump card wrote:
+“Since you did not advise me in time, as per our agreement, I learned
+of Bentes death only through the newspapers; I looked up the Minister
+but it was too late, the appointment of his successor had already been
+signed. Your frivolousness has lost you the best chance of your life.
+Remember this for your future guidance: _tarde venientibus ossa_,
+and be smarter in the future.”
+
+A month later they found him hanging from a beam in his room with his
+tongue lolling, his body rigid.
+
+He had hung himself by a leg of his drawers.
+
+When the news got about town everyone found it amusing. The Portuguese
+grocer commented thus to the cashiers:
+
+“What a fellow! Even on his dying day he cracks a joke! Hung himself by
+a drawers leg! Only Pontes would remember to do that.”
+
+And they repeated in chorus a series of “Ha! has!!” ... the only
+epitaph given him by man.
+
+
+
+
+                         THE PLANTATION BUYER
+
+
+No worse farm existed than that of Espigão. It had already ruined three
+owners, which made superstitious people say: “The thing’s a white
+elephant!” The last holder, a certain David Moreira de Souza, acquired
+it at auction, convinced that it was a great bargain; but there he was,
+too, head over ears in debt, scratching his head disconsolately....
+
+The coffee plantations stripped every other year, lashed by hail or
+blackened by frost, never yielded enough of a crop to fill a deposit.
+
+The overgrown pastures were full of white-ant heaps intertwined with
+choking weeds, teeming with ticks; any ox turned loose there soon
+became thin, with its ribs showing, full of parasites, pitifully sorry
+and sore.
+
+The underbrush that had taken the place of the native forest, revealed
+by the indiscreet presence of the brambles, the poorest kind of dry
+soil. On such soil the manioc shyly put forth little knotted branches;
+the large species of sugar-cane took on the aspect of the most slender
+kind and these in turn became similar to little bamboos that passed
+through the grinding cylinders untouched.
+
+The horses were full of lice. The pigs that escaped the plague never
+got beyond the Pharaonic thinness of Egyptian cows.
+
+On every side the cutting-ant reigned supreme, day and night busily
+mowing down the grass of the pastures, so that in October the sky would
+be darkened by clouds of winged ants, male and female, frolicking about
+in their love-making.
+
+Unopened roads, fallen fences, laborer’s dwellings full of leaks,
+with shaky roofs, foretelling ugly ruins. Even in the manor-house,
+everything indicated approaching ruin; plastering falling, floors
+worm-eaten; paneless windows; rickety furniture; bulging walls ... was
+there anything whole to be found there?
+
+Within this tumble-down setting, the planter, grown old under the
+burden of long disillusionment, and besides, gnawed by the voracious
+interest, without hope and without remedy, a hundred times a day
+scratched the cow-lick of hair on his grey head.
+
+His wife, poor Dona Izaura, having lost her autumnal strength, gathered
+upon her face all the freckles and crows-feet invented by the years,
+hand in hand with a hard-working life.
+
+Zico the eldest child had turned out a good-for-nothing, fond of rising
+at ten, plastering his hair until eleven and spending the rest of his
+time in unlucky flirtations.
+
+Aside from this vagabond, there was Zilda, then about seventeen, a
+pretty girl, but more sentimental than was reasonable and good for her
+parents’ peace of mind. The girl spent her time reading love stories
+and building castles in Spain....
+
+There was only one way out of such a situation: sell the darned
+_fazenda_, to be able to breathe free from mortgages. It was
+difficult, however, at a time when coffee sold at five _mil réis_
+the _arroba_;[5] it was hard to lay one’s hands on a fool of the
+dimensions required. Attracted by clever advertisements, some buyers
+found their way to Espigão, but turned up their noses, swearing at the
+useless journey and making no offer.
+
+“It would be dear as a gift!” they would murmur to themselves.
+
+Moreira’s cow-lick, after repeated scratching, yielded a mystifying
+plan: to place along the edge of the thickets and one or other openings
+accessible to visitors, plants of good standard woods, transplanted
+from the neighboring forests. The lunatic did so and even more: stuck
+into a hollow a tree of _Pau d’aiho_, imported from São Paulo’s
+rich red soil and fertilized the coffee plants on the edge of the path
+just enough to conceal the poverty of the rest. Wherever the sun’s rays
+disclosed more clearly the poorness of the soil, there the hallucinated
+old man covered it over with rich sifted earth....
+
+One day he received a letter from his business agent announcing a new
+buyer. “Handle your man carefully,” he advised, “know how to work the
+game and you have him. His name is Pedro Trancoso, very wealthy, very
+young, very loquacious, and he wants a fazenda for pleasure. It all
+depends upon tricking him with the ability of a cunning dealer.”
+
+Moreira prepared himself for the task. In the first place he warned
+the laborers to be on their guard, careful in what they should say.
+Instructed by their master, the men answered to the queries of the
+visitors with consummate cunning, so as to transform into marvels the
+evils of the place.
+
+Buyers are accustomed to interrogate unexpectedly, being suspicious
+of the information given by the proprietors. Therefore, if
+this happened--and it always happened, because Moreira was the
+personification of the contriver of chance situations,--there occurred
+dialogues such as these:
+
+“Is there much frost about here?”
+
+“Very little, and that only in bad years.”
+
+“Do beans grow well here?”
+
+“Holy Mother! This very year I planted five measures and harvested
+fifty _alqueires_. And what beans!”
+
+“Do the cattle have ticks?”
+
+“Why, no! only one or another here and there. For raising, none better.
+No weeds or wild beans. The trouble is, the master has no strength. If
+he had the means this would become a fine fazenda!”
+
+Having warned the informants, that night the preparation for receiving
+their guest was discussed, all happy with the renewal of their lost
+hopes.
+
+“I bet that this time the thing goes!” said the vagabond son and
+declared that for his part he needed three _contos_ to set himself
+up in business.
+
+“What kind of business?” asked the father astonished.
+
+“A grocery store at Volta Redonda....”
+
+“At Volta Redonda! I was already surprised at a sensible idea in this
+crazy head. So as to sell on credit to Tudinha’s people?”
+
+The lad, though he didn’t blush, kept silent; he had reason to do so.
+
+The wife wanted a house in town; for a long while she had her eye on a
+small dwelling on a certain street, a cheap little house suitable for a
+family of moderate means.
+
+Zilda a piano ... and crates and crates of love stories....
+
+They slept happily that night and on the following day they sent early
+to the village for dainties to offer to their guest--butter, cheese and
+biscuits. There was some hesitation over the butter.
+
+“That’s not worth while!” objected the wife. “That will cost three
+_mil réis_. Far better buy me with that money a piece of unbleached
+cotton that I am needing so much.”
+
+“It is necessary, my dear! Sometimes a trifle helps to get around a man
+and facilitates the closing up of business. Butter is grease and grease
+makes things slide!”
+
+The butter won.
+
+While she awaited the arrival of the ingredients, Dona Izaura fell to
+sweeping and cleaning the house and arranging the guest’s room; killed
+the least thin of the cockerels and a young lame sucking pig; seasoned
+the dough for the pasties and was rolling it out when....
+
+“There he comes!” shouted Moreira from the window where he had
+posted himself since early morning, nervously scanning the high road
+with an old field glass; without leaving his post of observation he
+transmitted the details as he saw them to his more than busy wife.
+
+“He is young ... well dressed ... Panama hat ... looks like Chico
+Canhambora....”
+
+At last the man arrived; dismounted; presented his card: Pedro Trancoso
+de Carvalhaes Fagundes. A finer young fellow and of pleasanter speech
+had never landed at Espigão.
+
+He began relating all sorts of things with the ease of a man who is as
+much at home in the world as in his own house in pyjamas--the journey,
+incidents connected with it; a marmosette he had seen hanging from a
+branch.
+
+As soon as they had entered the waiting room Zico glued his ear to the
+keyhole, from there whispering to the women busily setting the table
+all he could catch of the conversation. Suddenly he squeaked to his
+sister with a suggestive grimace:
+
+“He’s a bachelor, Zilda!”
+
+The girl dropped the cutlery as though unintentionally and disappeared.
+Half an hour later she appeared, decked out in her best dress and with
+two little round red roses painted on her cheeks.
+
+Anyone entering the oratory of the fazenda at that moment would note
+the absence of several petals of the red tissue paper roses that
+adorned the image of Saint Anthony and a little candle lighted at the
+feet of the image. In the country, rouge and marriages spring from the
+oratory....
+
+Trancoso was delivering a dissertation upon various agricultural
+themes.
+
+“The ‘_canastrão_’? Piffle!! A backward breed and very rank. My
+favorite is the Poland China. The Large Black is also good. But the
+Poland! What precocity! What a breed!”
+
+Moreira, terribly ignorant on the subject, knowing only the famished
+skinny ones without name or breed, that grunted in his own pastures,
+unconsciously opened his mouth in astonishment.
+
+“As far as bovine cattle is concerned,” continued Trancoso, “I think
+that all of them from Barreto to Prado are entirely wrong. Completely
+wrong, I say. There should be no selection or inter-breeding. I advise
+the immediate adoption of the finer breeds; the Polled Angus and the
+Red Lincoln. We have no pastures? We’ll make them. We’ll plant alfalfa.
+Make hay, ensilage. Assis confessed to me once....”
+
+Assis! the highest authorities on agriculture confessed to that man! He
+was intimate with them all--Prado, Barreto, Cotrim ... and Ministers!
+“Now, I told Bezerra....”
+
+Never was that house honored with a more distinguished gentleman, so
+well connected and so widely traveled.
+
+He spoke of the Argentine and Chicago like someone who had just come
+from there. Marvelous!
+
+Moreira’s mouth opened and had almost reached the last degree of
+aperture allowed by the jaws, when a woman’s voice announced breakfast.
+
+Introductions. Zilda was the recipient of phrases never before dreamed
+of, which made her heart leap for joy. So were the stewed chicken, the
+pork and beans, the pasties and even the drinking water.
+
+“In town, Mr. Moreira, water like this, pure as crystal, absolutely
+drinkable is worth the best of wines. Happy are those who can drink it!”
+
+The family looked at each other: they never imagined that they owned
+such a precious thing, and each one involuntarily took a little swallow
+of it as though acquainting themselves with it at that moment for the
+first time. Zico even smacked his lips.
+
+Dona Izaura could not contain herself with delight. The compliments to
+her cooking captivated the good lady; she would have considered herself
+well paid for the hard work with half that praise.
+
+“Learn, Zico,” she whispered to her son, “that’s what a gentleman
+should be!”
+
+After coffee, hailed with the word “delicious!” Moreira invited the
+young man for a turn on horseback.
+
+“Impossible, my friend, I do not ride after meals; it gives me
+cephalalgy.”
+
+Zilda blushed. Zilda always blushed when she did not understand a word.
+
+“We will go this afternoon, I am in no hurry. Now I prefer a short walk
+through the orchard to aid the digestion.”
+
+While the two men went slowly in that direction, Zilda and Zico flew
+for the dictionary.
+
+“It isn’t among the S’s,” said the youth.
+
+“Look for it with a C,” suggested the girl.
+
+After some trouble they found the word.
+
+“Headache! Well, I never! Just that....”
+
+In the afternoon on the ride, Trancoso admired and praised all that he
+saw, to the astonishment of the planter, who, for the first time, heard
+his belongings praised.
+
+Usually buyers run down everything, looking only for faults; they begin
+to exclaim about the dangers of loose soil as soon as they come across
+a crumbling bank; they find the water scarce and bad; and if they see
+an ox they glue their eyes on the parasites.
+
+Not Trancoso! He only praised! As Moreira, when they passed the
+counterfeited places, pointed to the standards with trembling finger,
+the young man exclaimed in astonishment:
+
+“_Caquéra!_ Why this is wonderful!”
+
+At sight of the _Pau d’Alho_, his amazement reached its height:
+
+“What I see is marvelous! I never expected to see even a vestige
+of such a tree in these parts,” he said slipping a leaf into his
+pocketbook as a souvenir.
+
+In the house he unbosomed himself to the old lady:
+
+“Well, madam, the quality of the soil is far beyond my expectations.
+Even _Pau d’Alho_! It is really astonishing!”
+
+Dona Izaura lowered her eyes.
+
+The scene occurred on the veranda.
+
+Night had fallen.
+
+A night humming with the chirp of crickets, the croaks of frogs,
+numberless stars in the sky and endless peace on earth.
+
+Trancoso, stretched out on a lounging-chair, transformed the torpor of
+digestion into poetic lassitude.
+
+“How charming is the chirp of the crickets! I adore starry nights, the
+rustic life of the country, so healthy and happy!...”
+
+“But it is very lonely....” ventured Zilda.
+
+“Do you think so! Do you prefer the strident song of the cicada tuning
+up in the bright sunshine?” said he in a mellifluous voice. “Then it
+must be that some shadow darkens your little heart.”
+
+Moreira seeing that sentimentalism was coming into play and in this way
+liable to lead to matrimonial consequences, slapped his forehead and
+cried out: “The devil! If I wasn’t forgetting all about....” He fled
+precipitately, leaving the two alone.
+
+The dialogue continued, all honey and roses.
+
+“You are a poet!” exclaimed Zilda at one of his sweetest warblings.
+
+“Who would not be, beneath the stars of the heavens and beside a star
+of the earth?”
+
+“Poor me!” sighed the girl, her heart beating fast.
+
+From Trancoso’s heart also rose a sigh. He lifted his eyes to a cloud
+that took the place of the Milky Way in the sky and he murmured a
+soliloquy strong enough to bring a girl to terms:
+
+“Love! ... the Milky Way of Life! The perfume of roses, the veil of
+dawn! To love, and listen to the stars.... Love, for only he who loves
+can understand what they say!”
+
+It was sour contraband wine; but to the girl’s inexperienced palate it
+tasted like Lachryma Christi. Zilda felt the fumes go to her head. She
+wanted to reciprocate. She searched the rhetorical nosegays of her mind
+so as to cull the most beautiful flower and found only a humble jasmine.
+
+“What a beautiful thought for a postal-card!” she said.
+
+They did not go beyond the jasmine; coffee and fried cakes interrupted
+the budding idyl.
+
+What a night! One would say the angel of happiness had spread his
+golden wings over that lonely house. Zilda saw all the love tales she
+had ever devoured come true. Dona Izaura enjoyed the hope of marrying
+her off wealthy. Moreira dreamed of settling debts with a big surplus
+tinkling in his pockets. And Zico, transformed in his imagination into
+a grocer, the whole night in dreams sold on credit to Tudinha’s people,
+who, finally charmed by so much kindness, gave him the daughter’s much
+desired hand.
+
+Only Trancoso slept the sleep of the just; dreamless and undisturbed by
+nightmares. How good it is to be rich!
+
+The next day he went over the remainder of the fazenda,
+coffee-plantations and pastures; examined the live-stock and
+out-buildings; and as the amiable young man continued to be charmed,
+Moreira, who the night before had decided to ask forty contos for
+Espigão, thought it wise to raise the price. After the scene of the
+_Pau d’Alho_, in his mind he raised it to forty-five; after the
+examination of the live-stock it had already risen to sixty. And thus
+when the great question was broached, the old man declared courageously
+in the firm voice of an _alea jacta_:
+
+“Seventy-five!” and waited standing for the storm to burst.
+
+Trancoso, however, found the price reasonable.
+
+“Well, it is not expensive, the price is more moderate than I expected.”
+
+The old man bit his lips and tried to retract.
+
+“Seventy-five, yes, but ... not including the cattle!...”
+
+“That’s fair,” answered Trancoso.
+
+“... also not including the pigs!”
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+“... and the furniture!”
+
+“Naturally.”
+
+The planter choked; there was nothing more to exclude; he confessed to
+himself that he was an ass. Why had he not said eighty right off?
+
+The wife informed of the case, called him a fool.
+
+“But, woman, at forty it was already a good business!”
+
+“For eighty it would have been doubly good. Don’t excuse yourself. I
+never saw a Moreira who was not slow and stupid. It’s in the blood. You
+are not to blame.”
+
+They sulked for a while but the eagerness to build air-castles with the
+unexpected pile of money swept the cloud far away.
+
+Zico took advantage of the favorable occasion to insist upon the three
+contos for setting up the business and was promised them.
+
+Dona Izaura no longer wanted the little cottage. Now she remembered a
+larger one on a street where processions passed--Eusebio Leite’s house.
+
+“But that one is worth twelve contos,” warned the husband.
+
+“But it is far better than that shanty. Very well arranged. Only I
+don’t like the windowless room near the pantry; it’s too dark.”
+
+“We could put in a sky-light.”
+
+“The yard, too, needs to be made over; instead of the chicken
+enclosure....”
+
+Until far into the night, while sleep did not come, they remodeled the
+house, transforming it into the loveliest dwelling in town. The couple
+were giving the last touches, and beginning to get sleepy when Zico
+knocked at the door.
+
+“Three contos are not enough, father, I need five. There are the
+arrangements that I had not thought of, the license and the rental and
+other little things....”
+
+Between two yawns the father generously granted six.
+
+And Zilda? She floated along on the high seas of a fairy tale.
+
+Let her float on.
+
+Finally the day arrived for the amiable buyer to leave. Trancoso bid
+goodbye. He was sorry that he could not extend the delightful stay, but
+important affairs called him back. A rich man’s life is not as easy as
+it seems.... As to the business, it was all but closed; he would give a
+definite answer within the week.
+
+Trancoso left carrying a parcel of eggs,--he had highly appreciated a
+breed of chickens raised there; and a little bag of yams,--a dainty of
+which he was very fond.
+
+He also took with him a fine present, Moreira’s sorrel, the best horse
+on the farm. He had praised the animal so much during his rides that
+the planter had been obliged to refuse an exchange proposed and make
+him a present of it.
+
+“Just see!” said Moreira, voicing the general opinion. “Young, very
+rich, straight as can be, learned as a doctor and, nevertheless,
+amiable, polite, incapable of turning up his nose at things like the
+idiots who have come here. That’s a gentleman for you!”
+
+The old lady was specially pleased at the young man’s lack of ceremony.
+To take away eggs and yams! How nice of him!
+
+They all agreed with her, each one praising him in his or her way. And
+thus, even absent, the amiable and wealthy youth was the talk of the
+household during the entire week.
+
+The week passed, however, without the arrival of the much desired
+answer. And still another, and yet another. Moreira wrote him, already
+apprehensive; no answer. He remembered a friend who lived in the same
+town and sent him a letter asking him to obtain a definite decision
+from the capitalist. Regarding the price, he would lower it somewhat.
+He would sell the fazenda for fifty-five, fifty, or even forty,
+including live-stock and furniture.
+
+His friend answered without delay. Upon opening the envelope the four
+hearts of the Espigão fazenda beat violently: that paper held the
+destiny of all four.
+
+The letter read as follows: “Dear Moreira: Either I am very much
+mistaken or you are laboring under an illusion. There is no wealthy
+Trancoso Carvalhaes about here. There is little Trancoso, son of Nhá
+Béva, commonly called Rag-Picker. He is a swindler and lives off
+crooked deals and knows how to fool those who are not acquainted with
+him. Latterly he has travelled over the State of Minas, from fazenda
+to fazenda under divers pretexts. Sometimes he pretends to be a buyer
+and spends a week in the planter’s house, boring him with rides through
+the plantations and inspections of boundaries; eats and drinks of the
+best that’s to be had; flirts with the servant-girls or the daughter
+of the house or anyone he comes across, and at the best stage of the
+game, beats it. He has done this a hundred times, always choosing
+another neighbourhood. The rascal likes to change his diet! As the only
+Trancoso here is this one I shall not present your proposal to the
+rogue. Think of the Rag-Picker buying a farm!...”
+
+Moreira dropped into a chair stupefied, with the letter on his knee.
+Then the blood rose to his face and his eyes flashed.
+
+The hope of the household fell with a crash, accompanied by the girl’s
+tears, the old lady’s anger and the rage of the men. Zico proposed
+leaving immediately on the track of the bandit, so as to smash his face
+for him.
+
+“Let it be, boy. The world rolls on. Some day I will run across him and
+square accounts with this thief.”
+
+Poor castles! There is nothing sadder than the sudden tumbling down
+of illusions. The beautiful castles in Spain erected during a month
+with the wonderful pile of money turned into dingy ruins. Dona Izaura
+bewailed her cakes, her butter and chickens. As for Zilda, the disaster
+had the effect of an icy blast across a tender flower in bloom. She
+took to her bed in a fever. Her face became hollow. All the tragic
+episodes in the novels she had read fled through her memory; she saw
+in herself the victim of them all. And for days contemplated suicide.
+Finally she became used to the idea and continued to live. Thus she
+verified the fact that folks die of love only in fiction....
+
+The story ends here--for the audience; for the gallery it still goes on
+a bit. The audience is accustomed to simulate some fine habits of good
+taste and tone, which are very laughable; it enters the theatre after
+the play has begun, and leaves when the epilogue has hardly commenced.
+Now the galleries want the whole thing so as to have their full money’s
+worth to the last penny. In the novels and stories they ask insistently
+for all the details of the plot and if the author, led by the teaching
+of his school, presents them with the half-finished sentence which he
+calls the impressionable note, at the most exciting point, they turn
+up their noses. They want to know and they are perfectly right, if
+So-and-so died, if the girl married happily, if the man finally sold
+the fazenda. To whom and for how much.
+
+Healthy, human and highly respectable curiosity!
+
+“Did poor Moreira sell the fazenda?”
+
+I am sorry to say that he did not! And he did not sell it due to the
+most unconceivable of all the misunderstandings invented in the world
+by the devil,--yes, because besides the devil, who would be capable of
+tangling up the threads of the skein with such loops and knots just
+when the piece of crochet is about to be finished?
+
+Chance conferred upon Trancoso fifty contos in the lottery. Don’t
+laugh. Why wouldn’t Trancoso be the chosen one if chance is blind and
+he had the ticket in his pocket? He won the fifty contos which to a
+poor beggar of that sort signified great wealth.
+
+Once in possession of the pile of money, after weeks of dizziness he
+decided to buy a fazenda. He wanted to stop up people’s mouths doing
+something that had never entered his head: buy a plantation.
+
+He passed in review all those that he had visited during the vagabond
+years, leaning finally towards the Espigão fazenda. Contributing to
+this were the memory of the girl, the old lady’s cakes and the idea of
+giving over the administration of the fazenda to his father-in-law in
+such a way as to leave him free to loaf, gently basking in Zilda’s love
+and the culinary perfections of his mother-in-law.
+
+Therefore he wrote to Moreira announcing his return in order to close
+the deal.
+
+Alas! when said letter reached the Espigão fazenda there were roars of
+anger mingled with howls of vengeance.
+
+“Now’s our chance!” said the old man. “The rascal liked the fun and
+wants to repeat the dose; but this time I’ll fix you, see if I don’t!”
+he ended rubbing his hands together in anticipation of revenge.
+
+In pale Zilda’s sinking heart, however, there flashed a ray of hope.
+The sombre night of her soul was lighted up by the moon-beam of a “who
+knows?” However, she did not dare to face her father’s and brother’s
+anger, for both had agreed upon a tremendous settling of accounts. She
+pinned her faith on a miracle and lit another little candle to Saint
+Anthony....
+
+The great day arrived. Trancoso entered the fazenda dancing up on the
+sorrel. Moreira went down to meet him below with his hands behind his
+back. Even before reining up his horse, the amiable rogue had already
+begun to exclaim:
+
+“How do you do, my dear Moreira! At last the great day has arrived.
+This time I’ve come to buy the fazenda.”
+
+Moreira shook. He waited until the scoundrel had dismounted and hardly
+had Trancoso thrown aside the reins and turned towards him with open
+arms, all smiles, when the old man drew a whip from under his coat and
+belaboured him with the fury of a wild boar.
+
+“You want a plantation, you great scoundrel! Take that and that, you
+thief!” and slash, slash, the whip fell in strong and angry strokes.
+
+The poor fellow, dazed by the unexpected attack, fled to the horse and
+mounted blindly, while Zico, the aggrieved all-but-brother-in-law, fell
+upon him with another shower of whaling across his back.
+
+Dona Izaura set the dogs on him:
+
+“Catch him, Brinquinho! Hold tight, Joli!”
+
+The unfortunate plantation-buyer, pursued like a fox on a run, spurred
+his horse and flew, followed by a hail of insults and stones. As he
+passed out of the gate he still managed to hear in the midst of the
+yelling, the insults of the old woman:
+
+“You cake eater! You butter swallower! Take that, and you’ll never try
+it again, you robber of eggs and yams!”
+
+And Zilda?
+
+Back of the window-pane, her eyes swollen from crying, the sorrowful
+girl saw disappear forever, wrapped in a cloud of dust, the gentle
+knight of her golden dreams.
+
+Unlucky Moreira thus lost on that day, the only chance Fortune had
+given him in his life to make a profitable deal: getting rid at a
+single stroke of his daughter and the Espigão fazenda....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: The translations are by a woman friend of Lobato’s,
+resident in Brazil.
+
+A more extended account of Senhor Lobato may be found in my
+_Brazilian Literature_, pages 277 to 291. (New York, 1922).]
+
+[Footnote 2: Supposed to be the windiest day of the year.]
+
+[Footnote 3: A _mil réis_ is about 25 cents at par.]
+
+[Footnote 4: An arroba equals 32 pounds.]
+
+[Footnote 5: I. e. About 25 cents per 32 pounds.]
+
+
+
+
+                         =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
+
+Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
+quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
+otherwise left unbalanced.
+
+Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were
+made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original
+book; otherwise they were not changed.
+
+In page 14, one real for nine yards means 20 réis for 180 yards or
+about 166 metres--330 metres would be 40 réis and not 60 réis as
+stated by the author.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78403 ***