diff options
Diffstat (limited to '78403-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 78403-h/78403-h.htm | 2022 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78403-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 0 -> 196063 bytes |
2 files changed, 2022 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/78403-h/78403-h.htm b/78403-h/78403-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..591cb3f --- /dev/null +++ b/78403-h/78403-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2022 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Brazilian Short Stories | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +/* General headers */ + +h1 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +h2, h3 { + text-align: center; + font-weight: bold; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; + text-indent: 1.5em; +} + +.nind {text-indent:0;} + +.nindc {text-align:center; text-indent:0;} + +.large {font-size: 125%;} + +.space-above2 { margin-top: 2em; } +.space-below2 { margin-bottom: 2em; } + +.spa1 { + margin-top: 1em + } + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; } +table.autotable td { padding: 0.25em; } + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +/* Images */ + +img {max-width: 100%; width: 100%; height: auto;} +.width500 {max-width: 500px;} +.x-ebookmaker .width500 {width: 100%;} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: 1px dashed;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78403 ***</div> + +<figure class="figcenter width500" id="cover" style="width: 1600px;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="1600" height="2565" alt="This +collection represents one of the earliest introductions of Lobato's +work to North American readers."> + +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="nindc"><span style="display:inline-block;">LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO.<br> +<small>Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</small></span> +<span style="display:inline-block; margin-left:0.5em; vertical-align:top; font-size:1.8em">733</span> +</p> +</div> + + +<h1>Brazilian Short +Stories</h1> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"><span class="large">Monteiro Lobato</span></p> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2">With an Introduction by<br> +Isaac Goldberg</p> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2">HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY<br> +GIRARD, KANSAS +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="nindc"> +Copyright, 1925,<br> +Haldeman-Julius Company<br> +<br> +<br> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="BRAZILIAN_SHORT_STORIES">BRAZILIAN SHORT STORIES</h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> +</div> + + +<table class="autotable"> +<tbody><tr> +<td class="tdl"> </td> +<td class="tdr"> <span class="allsmcap">PAGE</span></td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdl">Introduction</td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdl">Modern Torture</td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdl">The Penitent Wag</td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdl">The Plantation Buyer</td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</h2> +</div> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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,<span class="pagenum" +id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> 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:</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“Brazil is an ailing country.”</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p class="right"> +<span class="allsmcap">ISAAC GOLDBERG</span><br> +</p> + +<p>Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1924.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="BRAZILIAN">BRAZILIAN SHORT STORIES</h2> + + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="MODERN_TORTURE">MODERN TORTURE</h2> +</div> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>As proof I here adduce the avatar of the ancient tortures: the +postman’s job.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The innocent man sees both honor and business<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>Here we see the difference between the ominous medieval times and the +super-excellency of the democracy of the present day.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The State awards—the same State that maintains fat bureaucratic +caterpillars at a <i>conto</i> and Congressional parrots at a hundred <i>mil +réis</i> per day,—awards him, this generous and wealthy State ... +one hundred <i>mil réis</i> per month. That is, one <i>real</i> for +every nine yards of torment. Twenty <i>réis</i> they pay him for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> +three hundred and thirty meters of torture. That is, one kilometer of +martyrdom for sixty <i>réis</i>. Cheaper pain would be impossible....</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It still takes it for granted that the hundred <i>mil réis</i><a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> down five or ten <i>mil réis</i> 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.”</p> + +<p>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 <i>Equus</i>, finally one day falls exhausted and famished in the +midst of the journey.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>This one earns eight hundred <i>mil réis</i> per month, is son of +someone, brother-in-law, father-in-law<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> 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:</p> + +<p>“These postmen! What vagabonds they are!”</p> + +<p>And signs the dismissal of the culprit for the good of the public +service.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“He borrowed one hundred <i>mil réis</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> ... run to +any country where he is unknown and can die in peace.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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 <i>mil +réis</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Said Biriba was a human snail, slow in movement and obtuse in ideas, +with two tremendous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> them for mangy mares and prove to the unbelieving, +by arguments whispered in their ears, that “the Government is on your +side.”</p> + +<p>After the victory Biriba felt for the first time in his life entire joy +of heart, head and stomach.</p> + +<p>To win! Oh, nectar! Oh incomparable ambrosia!</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>What would the boss give him?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“You see, Biriba, what loyalty is worth. You get a fine job! Regino is +to be agent and you postman.”</p> + +<p>The most he could complain of was that he had no horse.</p> + +<p>“That can be managed,” said the Colonel promptly; “I have an Arab mare, +single-footer, thoroughbred, worth two hundred <i>mil réis</i>; 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!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Biriba began his work: six leagues to do today and undo tomorrow, +without any rest except the thirty-first day of every other month.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir, yes, sir!...”</p> + +<p>No other words left his lips, although the continued abuse exasperated +him. Besides the small and less troublesome orders there were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“I am accompanying Dona Engracia who is mid-wife in Itaóca; she +dismounted for a moment and....”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>And the scoldings....</p> + +<p>“Mr. Biriba, it wasn’t number 40 thread I ordered. You are stupid!”</p> + +<p>When the material was not right:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p> + +<p>“Couldn’t you see that the calico would fade, you ass?”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“This Biriba is an idiot! To think of his bringing the opposite party’s +goat! Ha! ha! ha!”</p> + +<p>This and other happenings embittered him. He became thin and yellow.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>Scrofulous as they, only one other creature, Cunegundes. Cunegundes was +a dog without owner, covered with mange, that strayed about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> the town +avoiding flies and kicks. What should they do but change Cunegundes’ +name to Biriba! The scoundrels!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Biriba lost his patience and grumbled.</p> + +<p>Alas! The boss soon heard of it and called him to account.</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“So one’s mode of life can be changed offhand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> like that? You want to +abandon your friends: And partisan discipline, what of that, my dear +idiot?”</p> + +<p>Biriba’s dismissal would suit no one.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p> + +<p>He decided to betray.</p> + +<p>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.”...</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Take care! Our fate is in your hands. There’s confidence for you, hey?”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In consequence of the inexplicable eclipse of the postman, the +exominous Evandro assumed leadership. The slaughter began. Everything +savouring of Fidencio was turned out.</p> + +<p>However the new broom of dismissals spared ... Biriba! The new chief +approached him and said:</p> + +<p>“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!...”</p> + +<p>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....</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_PENITENT_WAG">THE PENITENT WAG</h2> +</div> + + +<p>Francisco Teixeira de Souza Pontes, bastard scion of a Souza Pontes +family, rich planters of Barreiros and owners of thirty thousand +“arrobas”<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> of coffee, at thirty-two years of age began to take life +seriously.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> 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?</p> + +<p>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 <i>stegosaurus</i> upon seeing hairy +<i>homos</i> perched upon tree-ferns, according to the laughable +descriptive science of Barros Barreto.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>This reached such a point that it was only<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>“He beats the devil, this Pontes!”</p> + +<p>“Hold on, man, you’ll make me gag!”</p> + +<p>And when the wit tried to look innocent and idiotic, remarking:</p> + +<p>“But what did I do? I never opened my mouth....”</p> + +<p>“Ha, ha, ha!” everyone laughed, their jaws aching, weeping +spasmodically with uncontrollable hilarity.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“You amuse me, at least, and are not like Major Carapuça who cheats +with a face like a wooden Indian.”</p> + +<p>That unstamped receipt troubled our wag<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>But the life of a grown man requires seriousness, gravity and even +soberness, unnecessary in youth.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> in one exception: laughter is the prerogative of the human +species,—aldermen excepted.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The wretched creature, bewildered and perfectly serious, tried his best +to dispel the misunderstanding:</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>The merchant loosened his belt.</p> + +<p>“You mean it? Pshaw! Ha! ha! ha! Look here, Pontes, you....”</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“He is still the same! he’ll never behave, that devil of a fellow, and +he is no longer young....”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> + +<p>“Pontes overseer! He! he! he!”</p> + +<p>“But....”</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>And shouting within doors:</p> + +<p>“Maria, come and hear Pontes’ latest. He! he! he!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>Pontes returned radiant with hope and patiently waited for subsequent +events, with one eye on politics and the other on the provident +aneurism.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“A hearty guffaw is an effort,” he satanically philosophized to +himself, “so a guffaw can kill. Well, I know how to provoke laughter.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> among his countrymen and furthermore, Pontes’ +various states of mind were of no importance because Pontes....</p> + +<p>“Well, Pontes was just Pontes!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p> + +<p>For certain commissions there was no one like him. Such earnestness! +Such subtleness! Such tact!</p> + +<p>One day the Major, reprimanding the clerk, held up his diplomacy as an +example.</p> + +<p>“You great idiot! go learn with Pontes who has a knack for everything, +and is amusing besides.”</p> + +<p>That day he invited Pontes to Dinner.</p> + +<p>Pontes’ soul was filled with joy: the fortress had opened its doors to +him.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“That’s old as the hills, Pontes, I remember reading it in Laemmert’s +Almanack for 1850.”</p> + +<p>Pontes would smile with a vanquished look; but would inwardly say,—if +that one wasn’t appreciated another would be.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>But how about the Major? Why did he not laugh at the English, German, +French or Brazilian jokes? Which did he prefer?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> interested and during the +artful pauses would ask for explanations or continuation:</p> + +<p>“And the rascally Englishman?... And what happened next?... Did Mr. +John call for help?”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The calculation was well made. Psychology, as well as Lent, was on his +side.</p> + +<p>One day, Carnival having passed, the Major gathered his friends about +an enormous stuffed fish, a present from the clerk.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Between swallows of rich wine the fish was eaten with religious rites. +No one dared break the silence of that bromatological beatitude.</p> + +<p>Pontes foresaw the opportune moment to play<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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:</p> + +<p>“Perrins, Lea & Perrins. I wonder if this might be a relation of that +Lord Perrins, who baffled the two bearded friars?”</p> + +<p>Inebriated by the seductions of the fish the Major’s eyes lit up +coveteously, greedy for a spicy tale:</p> + +<p>“Two bearded friars and a Lord! The story must be A-1! Fire away, +Chipmunk.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p> + +<p>And chewing mechanically he became absorbed in the fatal story.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>Weeks later he began to get over that soul-fright which everyone +attributed to sorrow over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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: <i>tarde venientibus ossa</i>, +and be smarter in the future.”</p> + +<p>A month later they found him hanging from a beam in his room with his +tongue lolling, his body rigid.</p> + +<p>He had hung himself by a leg of his drawers.</p> + +<p>When the news got about town everyone found it amusing. The Portuguese +grocer commented thus to the cashiers:</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>And they repeated in chorus a series of “Ha! has!!” ... the only +epitaph given him by man.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_PLANTATION_BUYER">THE PLANTATION BUYER</h2> +</div> + + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>The coffee plantations stripped every other year, lashed by hail or +blackened by frost, never yielded enough of a crop to fill a deposit.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The horses were full of lice. The pigs that escaped the plague never +got beyond the Pharaonic thinness of Egyptian cows.</p> + +<p>On every side the cutting-ant reigned supreme,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>There was only one way out of such a situation: sell the darned +<i>fazenda</i>, to be able to breathe free from mortgages. It was +difficult, however, at a time when coffee sold at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> five <i>mil réis</i> +the <i>arroba</i>;<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>“It would be dear as a gift!” they would murmur to themselves.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Pau d’aiho</i>, 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....</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>Moreira prepared himself for the task. In the first place he warned +the laborers to be on their guard, careful in what they should<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“Is there much frost about here?”</p> + +<p>“Very little, and that only in bad years.”</p> + +<p>“Do beans grow well here?”</p> + +<p>“Holy Mother! This very year I planted five measures and harvested +fifty <i>alqueires</i>. And what beans!”</p> + +<p>“Do the cattle have ticks?”</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>Having warned the informants, that night the preparation for receiving +their guest was discussed, all happy with the renewal of their lost +hopes.</p> + +<p>“I bet that this time the thing goes!” said the vagabond son and +declared that for his part he needed three <i>contos</i> to set himself +up in business.</p> + +<p>“What kind of business?” asked the father astonished.</p> + +<p>“A grocery store at Volta Redonda....”</p> + +<p>“At Volta Redonda! I was already surprised at a sensible idea in this +crazy head.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> So as to sell on credit to Tudinha’s people?”</p> + +<p>The lad, though he didn’t blush, kept silent; he had reason to do so.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Zilda a piano ... and crates and crates of love stories....</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“That’s not worth while!” objected the wife. “That will cost three +<i>mil réis</i>. Far better buy me with that money a piece of unbleached +cotton that I am needing so much.”</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>The butter won.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> the details as he saw them to his more than busy wife.</p> + +<p>“He is young ... well dressed ... Panama hat ... looks like Chico +Canhambora....”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“He’s a bachelor, Zilda!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>Trancoso was delivering a dissertation upon various agricultural +themes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + +<p>“The ‘<i>canastrão</i>’? 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!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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....”</p> + +<p>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....”</p> + +<p>Never was that house honored with a more distinguished gentleman, so +well connected and so widely traveled.</p> + +<p>He spoke of the Argentine and Chicago like someone who had just come +from there. Marvelous!</p> + +<p>Moreira’s mouth opened and had almost reached the last degree of +aperture allowed by the jaws, when a woman’s voice announced breakfast.</p> + +<p>Introductions. Zilda was the recipient of phrases never before dreamed +of, which made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> her heart leap for joy. So were the stewed chicken, the +pork and beans, the pasties and even the drinking water.</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Learn, Zico,” she whispered to her son, “that’s what a gentleman +should be!”</p> + +<p>After coffee, hailed with the word “delicious!” Moreira invited the +young man for a turn on horseback.</p> + +<p>“Impossible, my friend, I do not ride after meals; it gives me +cephalalgy.”</p> + +<p>Zilda blushed. Zilda always blushed when she did not understand a word.</p> + +<p>“We will go this afternoon, I am in no hurry. Now I prefer a short walk +through the orchard to aid the digestion.”</p> + +<p>While the two men went slowly in that direction, Zilda and Zico flew +for the dictionary.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t among the S’s,” said the youth.</p> + +<p>“Look for it with a C,” suggested the girl.</p> + +<p>After some trouble they found the word.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p> + +<p>“Headache! Well, I never! Just that....”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“<i>Caquéra!</i> Why this is wonderful!”</p> + +<p>At sight of the <i>Pau d’Alho</i>, his amazement reached its height:</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>In the house he unbosomed himself to the old lady:</p> + +<p>“Well, madam, the quality of the soil is far beyond my expectations. +Even <i>Pau d’Alho</i>! It is really astonishing!”</p> + +<p>Dona Izaura lowered her eyes.</p> + +<p>The scene occurred on the veranda.</p> + +<p>Night had fallen.</p> + +<p>A night humming with the chirp of crickets, the croaks of frogs, +numberless stars in the sky and endless peace on earth.</p> + +<p>Trancoso, stretched out on a lounging-chair,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> transformed the torpor of +digestion into poetic lassitude.</p> + +<p>“How charming is the chirp of the crickets! I adore starry nights, the +rustic life of the country, so healthy and happy!...”</p> + +<p>“But it is very lonely....” ventured Zilda.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The dialogue continued, all honey and roses.</p> + +<p>“You are a poet!” exclaimed Zilda at one of his sweetest warblings.</p> + +<p>“Who would not be, beneath the stars of the heavens and beside a star +of the earth?”</p> + +<p>“Poor me!” sighed the girl, her heart beating fast.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>It was sour contraband wine; but to the girl’s inexperienced palate it +tasted like Lachryma Christi. Zilda felt the fumes go to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>“What a beautiful thought for a postal-card!” she said.</p> + +<p>They did not go beyond the jasmine; coffee and fried cakes interrupted +the budding idyl.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Only Trancoso slept the sleep of the just; dreamless and undisturbed by +nightmares. How good it is to be rich!</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Pau d’Alho</i>, 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 <i>alea jacta</i>:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p> + +<p>“Seventy-five!” and waited standing for the storm to burst.</p> + +<p>Trancoso, however, found the price reasonable.</p> + +<p>“Well, it is not expensive, the price is more moderate than I expected.”</p> + +<p>The old man bit his lips and tried to retract.</p> + +<p>“Seventy-five, yes, but ... not including the cattle!...”</p> + +<p>“That’s fair,” answered Trancoso.</p> + +<p>“... also not including the pigs!”</p> + +<p>“Exactly.”</p> + +<p>“... and the furniture!”</p> + +<p>“Naturally.”</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>The wife informed of the case, called him a fool.</p> + +<p>“But, woman, at forty it was already a good business!”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>They sulked for a while but the eagerness to build air-castles with the +unexpected pile of money swept the cloud far away.</p> + +<p>Zico took advantage of the favorable occasion to insist upon the three +contos for setting up the business and was promised them.</p> + +<p>Dona Izaura no longer wanted the little cottage. Now she remembered a +larger one on a street where processions passed—Eusebio Leite’s house.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p> + +<p>“But that one is worth twelve contos,” warned the husband.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“We could put in a sky-light.”</p> + +<p>“The yard, too, needs to be made over; instead of the chicken +enclosure....”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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....”</p> + +<p>Between two yawns the father generously granted six.</p> + +<p>And Zilda? She floated along on the high seas of a fairy tale.</p> + +<p>Let her float on.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>He also took with him a fine present,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> 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.</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>The old lady was specially pleased at the young man’s lack of ceremony. +To take away eggs and yams! How nice of him!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The letter read as follows: “Dear Moreira: Either I am very much +mistaken or you are laboring under an illusion. There is no wealthy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> +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!...”</p> + +<p>Moreira dropped into a chair stupefied, with the letter on his knee. +Then the blood rose to his face and his eyes flashed.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Let it be, boy. The world rolls on. Some day I will run across him and +square accounts with this thief.”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> 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....</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Healthy, human and highly respectable curiosity!</p> + +<p>“Did poor Moreira sell the fazenda?”</p> + +<p>I am sorry to say that he did not! And he did not sell it due to the +most unconceivable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> 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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Therefore he wrote to Moreira announcing his return in order to close +the deal.</p> + +<p>Alas! when said letter reached the Espigão fazenda there were roars of +anger mingled with howls of vengeance.</p> + +<p>“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!”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> +he ended rubbing his hands together in anticipation of revenge.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“How do you do, my dear Moreira! At last the great day has arrived. +This time I’ve come to buy the fazenda.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“You want a plantation, you great scoundrel! Take that and that, you +thief!” and slash, slash, the whip fell in strong and angry strokes.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Dona Izaura set the dogs on him:</p> + +<p>“Catch him, Brinquinho! Hold tight, Joli!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“You cake eater! You butter swallower! Take that, and you’ll never try +it again, you robber of eggs and yams!”</p> + +<p>And Zilda?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> +The translations are by a woman friend of Lobato’s, +resident in Brazil.</p> + +<p class="nind">A more extended account of Senhor Lobato may be found in my +<i>Brazilian Literature</i>, pages 277 to 291. (New York, 1922).</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> +Supposed to be the windiest day of the year.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> +A <i>mil réis</i> is about 25 cents at par.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> +An arroba equals 32 pounds.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p class="nind"><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> +I. e. About 25 cents per 32 pounds.</p> + +</div> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="transnote spa1"> +<p class="nindc"><b>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</b></p> + + +<p>Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced +quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and +otherwise left unbalanced.</p> + +<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were +made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original +book; otherwise they were not changed.</p> + +<p>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.</p> +</div></div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78403 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/78403-h/images/cover.jpg b/78403-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..80f757f --- /dev/null +++ b/78403-h/images/cover.jpg |
