The Violent Land (10 page)

“Get him!” he had shouted to Damião.

Damião had drawn the revolver that he carried in his belt; he had fired, and the pack-driver had fallen, the burros passing over his body. Clementino had made for the plantation, the mark left by the whip still glowing red on his cheek. Damião had had no time to think it over, for the police had appeared, some days later, and he had had to flee. After that he had begun killing for Sinhô Badaró: Zequinha Fontes, Colonel Eduardo, that pair of thugs from Horacio's plantation, in the fight at Tabocas—that made five, didn't it? But then there was Silvio da Toca; Damião did not know how many that was. Not to mention the fellow who had been going to shoot Juca Badaró in the whorehouse at Ferradas—and if he didn't shoot him, it was because Damião was quicker on the draw. And not to mention, also, the other killings that followed. Firmo—how many would he make? “I'm going to ask Don' Ana to teach me to count on the other hand.” There were some of the workers who could count on their fingers and on their toes as well, but these were the more intelligent ones; they were not stupid like Negro Damião. But now it was necessary at least to learn to count on the fingers of the other hand. How many men had he killed already?

The moon above the breadfruit tree was casting its light on the path along which Firmo would come. It was a side-road, some two miles in length. Firmo would surely be in a hurry to get home, to take off his boots, and to be with Dona Tereza, his wife. Damião was acquainted with her. He had stopped sometimes in front of the house when he was passing, to ask for a jug of water. And Dona Tereza one day had even given him a drop of wine and they had exchanged a few words. She was pretty, and whiter than any writing-paper. Whiter than Don' Ana. Don' Ana was brown-skinned, sunburned. Dona Tereza looked as if she had never been in the sun, as if the sun had never touched her cheeks, her white flesh. The daughter of an Italian, she had come out from the city. She had a charming voice, and it sounded as if she were singing when she talked. Firmo surely would be in a hurry to get home, to be with his wife, to creep into that white flesh of hers. A woman was a rarity in these parts. Aside from the whores in the towns, four or five in each one, and they were a sickly lot, very few of the men had women. That was certainly true of the workers; but Firmo was not a worker; he had a little plantation of his own; he was up-and-coming and would end by being a colonel with a lot of land. Having laid out his grove, he had gone to Ilhéos to get him a wife. He had married the daughter of an Italian baker, a woman who was white and pretty—they even said that Juca Badaró, who was crazy over women, had cast an eye on her. Damião could not say for sure. But even if it was true, one thing was certain: she had not given him any encouragement. Juca had transferred his attentions elsewhere, and the gossip had ceased.

Yes, there was no doubt of it, Firmo would come by this road; he would not take a longer way home when he had a woman who was young and white waiting for him. The truth is, Negro Damião would have preferred that Firmo come by the highway. It was the first time that this had ever happened to him. Amid all the confused thoughts that were running through his head and the pain that he felt in his bosom, he was conscious at the same time of a certain humiliation. You would think he wasn't used to this sort of thing. You would think that he was Antonio Victor, that worker who came from Sergipe, and who, when he had killed a man in the fight with Horacio's gang at Tabocas, had afterwards trembled all night long and had even cried like a woman. He had got used to it after a while, and now he was Juca Badaró's killer, always at Juca's side when the latter went on a trip. Negro Damião was like Antonio Victor that first time; just as if he were not used to waiting up all night, lying for his man in ambush. The others would laugh at him as they had laughed at Antonio Victor that night of the row at Tabocas.

Negro Damião shut his eyes so that he might be able to forget all these images. He had finished his cigarette and he wondered if it was worth while rolling another. He did not have much tobacco, and he might have to wait a long time. Who could say when Firmo would come? He could not make up his mind, and was rather glad that now he had the problem of tobacco to occupy his thoughts. This was good backlands tobacco; the kind you got at Ilhéos was no good at all; it was terrible—too dry, it didn't last. But Tereza, what was she doing there? She was white. Damião had been thinking of his tobacco—how came Dona Tereza's white face to be there? Who had sent for her? Negro Damião was angry. A woman was always sticking her nose into things, coming when she wasn't called. But there was something else—why had Sinhô Badaró that afternoon spoken of those things to his brother? And why, if he had to speak of them, had he not at least sent him and Viriato out of earshot? As it was, Damião had overheard the entire conversation from the veranda.

“Do you enjoy killing people? Don't you feel anything at all? Nothing on the inside?”

Negro Damião knew now what it meant to feel things. He had never felt anything before. Possibly, had it not been Sinhô Badaró who spoke those words, had it been Juca instead, he would have thought nothing of it. But to Damião, Sinhô was a god. He respected him more than he did Jeremias, the witch-doctor who had cured him of bullet-wound and snake-bite. And Sinhô's words had stayed with him, weighing on his heart, running through his head. They brought him a vision of Dona Tereza's white face as she waited for her husband, repeating, meanwhile, Sinhô Badaró's words, the words of the friar also. Like the friar, she was half a foreigner. Only the friar's voice was full of anger as he told of terrible things to come, while Dona Tereza's was soft, like music.

He no longer thought of rolling himself a cigarette and puffing on it. What he was thinking of was Dona Tereza, waiting for Firmo and for love in the marriage bed. White flesh waiting for the husband. She had a kind face, too. Once she had given Negro Damião a drop of wine. And he had exchanged a few words with her, about the sun which was beating down on the highway that afternoon. Yes, she was a good woman, no foolishness about her. So good that she could even talk to a black assassin like Damião. She was mistress of her own cacao plantation and might have been stuck up like so many other women. But instead she had given him wine and had spoken of the sun and how hot it was. She was not afraid of him as so many other women would have been. Many of the others were frightened when they saw Damião coming and would hide inside the house to wait for their husbands. Damião always laughed at this fear on their part; he was even proud of it: it showed how widespread was his fame. But today, for the first time, it occurred to him that what they were fleeing was not a brave black man, but a black assassin.

A black assassin. He repeated the words in a low voice, slowly, and they had a tragic sound to his ears. The friar had said that no one should kill his fellow men, for it was a mortal sin, and one would pay for it by going to hell. Damião had thought little of it. But today it was Sinhô Badaró who had said those same things about killing. A black assassin. And Dona Tereza was kind, pretty as could be, and whiter than any woman on the neighbouring plantations. She loved her husband, you could see that, loved him so much that she would have nothing to do with Juca Badaró, a rich man, whom women slobbered over. The women were afraid of him, of Damião, the assassin.

He recalled now a long train of incidents: women who disappeared from the lawns when he came in sight; others who timidly spied on him from their windows; that prostitute in Ferradas who would not sleep with him for anything in the world, in spite of the fact that he had shown her a ten-milreis note in his hand. She simply would not sleep with him. She would not say why, she pretended she was sick, but in her face Damião could see something else: fear. He had thought nothing of it, had given that deep, full laugh of his, and had gone off to look for another woman. But now that whore's refusal was an additional wound. Don' Ana Badaró alone was kind to him; she was not afraid of the black man. But Don' Ana was a brave woman, a Badaró. Children also had no fear of him; but children do not understand such things; they did not know that he was a killer who went out to wait for men in ambush, to bring them down with that sure aim of his. He liked children. He got along with them better than he did with grown-ups. He liked to play with the simple toys of the children in the Big Houses; he liked satisfying the whims of the wretched little ones in the workers' huts. He got along well with children.

And then, of a sudden, the terrifying idea shot through his head: supposing that Dona Tereza were pregnant, with a child in her belly? The child would be born without a father; the father would have been brought down by Negro Damião's aim. With a tremendous effort he drew himself up; his enormous head was as heavy as on those days when he was on a big drunk. No, Dona Tereza could not be pregnant; he had had a good look at her that day when they had exchanged a few words at the door of Firmo's house. She wasn't carrying any child; no, no, she wasn't pregnant. But that had been six months ago. How was she now? Who could say? Why, she might very well be about to have a child, a child in the belly. It would be born without a father; it would learn that its father had fallen on the highway one moonlit night, brought down by Negro Damião. And it would hate him; it would not be like the other children who came to play with him, who climbed up on his back before they were able to mount the tamest of the burros. It would not eat the breadfruit that Negro Damião had gathered, or the golden-ripe bananas that he had gone to pluck in the banana groves. It would look at him with hatred, for Damião would always be the one who had killed its father.

Damião was sad beyond words. The moonlight fell upon him, the breadfruit tree hid him from the road, his rifle was resting on the tree-trunk. Others were in the habit of carving notches on their gun-stocks for each man they killed. He had never done that, because he had not wanted to deface his rifle. He was fond of it. He always kept it hanging up above the wooden bunk where he slept without a mattress. Sometimes at night Sinhô Badaró would have to leave on a trip, and he would send for the Negro to accompany him. Damião would then take down his rifle and go up to the Big House. The burros would be already saddled, and when Sinhô mounted he did likewise, and would ride along behind his boss, his rifle resting on the pommel of his saddle. For they might come upon one of Horacio's men in hiding along the highway. Sometimes it happened that Sinhô would call to him, and he would come up and ride alongside, and Sinhô would talk to him about the groves, the crops, the condition of the soft cacao, and all sorts of things that had to do with the life of the plantation. Those were happy days for Negro Damião. He would be happy, too, when they arrived at the end of their journey, at Rio do Braço, Tabocas, Ferradas, or Palestina. The colonel would give him a five-milreis note, and he would go spend the rest of the night in bed with some woman. He always left his rifle at the foot of the bed; for Sinhô might take it into his head to return at any moment, and would send a boy from the town to run down and look for the Negro in the whorehouses. He would leap from the bed—one night he had even leaped off the body of a woman—would seize his rifle and set out once more. He loved the weapon and kept it bright and shining; he liked to look at it. Today, however, he did not enjoy looking at it, but sought for something else on which to fix his gaze. There was the moon high up in the sky. Why was it you could look at the moon, and yet there was not a pair of eyes that could bear looking at the sun? This problem had never occurred to Negro Damião. He became absorbed in it, his mind wholly bent on solving it. That way he did not have to see Dona Tereza, nor the child which she was about to bear, nor listen to Sinhô Badaró's voice as he put the question to Juca:

“Do you enjoy killing people? Don't you feel anything at all? Nothing on the inside?”

Why was it no one could look the sun straight in the face? There was no one who could. The same with the men he killed; Damião never looked at them afterwards. He had no time; he had to get away the moment the job was done. Neither had he ever had the misfortune of finding that his victim was still alive, as had happened to the late Vicente Garangau, whom people talked so much about—Vicente had been done in at the hands of a man on whom he had fired. He had not taken the trouble to find out if the man was dead or not, and so had ended up in that horrible fashion, carved into tiny bits. Damião also never went to look at anyone he had brought down. What did they look like, anyway? He had seen many a dead person, but those that he had killed—what were they like? What would Firmo be like, this very night? Would he fall forward over his burro, which would carry him along; or would he tumble to the ground, blood flowing from his bosom? They would take him home like that, with the gaping wound in his chest, would take him to the house where he, Damião, had been the other day. Dona Tereza would be there, worried because her husband was so late in coming home. And what would she say when she saw them bringing him in, already cold in death, slain by Negro Damião? The tears would fall, over her chalk-white face. She might even become ill on account of her pregnancy; she might have her child before her time. She might even die, for she was such a weak little thing, so slender in her whiteness.

Thus, in place of killing one, he would have killed two. He would have killed a woman, which was something a brave black man did not do. And the child? He had not reckoned on the child—Damião counted on his fingers—that made three. For there was no longer any doubt in his mind that Tereza was pregnant. To him it was a certainty. He was going to kill three persons that night, a man, a woman, and a child. Children were so pretty, so kind to Negro Damião, he liked them. And with that shot he was going to kill one of them. And Dona Tereza also, with her white flesh, now lying dead in her coffin. He could see the funeral procession setting out for the cemetery in Ferradas, which was the nearest one. It would take a lot of people to carry the three caskets. They would have to get people from round about; they might even come up to the Badaró plantation. And Damião would come and lift the little sky-blue casket of the child, dressed like an angel. It was almost always he who bore the caskets of the “little angels” when a child died on the plantation. Damião would arrange the wildflowers, strew them over the casket, and then lift it to his shoulder. But Firmo's child he would not be able to lift, for he was the one who had killed it.