The Violent Land (16 page)

The women did not move. With the Bible clasped in her hand, Don' Ana followed the conversation with eager eyes. She understood everything now and was able to grasp the full import of what had happened. She realized that the future of the Badarós was at stake that night. Sinhô crossed the room with long strides.

“What could have got into that Negro, anyhow?”

Viriato attempted an explanation: “He must have been scared by something.”

“I'm not asking you.”

The mulatto shrank back, as Juca rubbed his hands together to conceal his nervousness.

“Now we have to go through with it,” he said. “And we'd better start before Horacio does. For this is going to be war.”

Frightened at her husband, Olga started to make a gesture and stopped. Sinhô sat down again. There was a moment's silence; he was thinking of the Bible passages that his daughter had read to him. It had been clear enough, but—

“Read some more, Don' Ana.”

Still standing, she once more opened the book at random. Her hands were trembling but her voice was steady as she read:

And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Sinhô threw back his head; he no longer had any doubts. With his hand he motioned for the women to leave the room. Olga and Raimunda had already started to leave, but Don' Ana did not stir. The two others were out in the hallway, yet she still stood there, the book in her hand, gazing at her father. Juca was anxious for her to leave so that he could talk freely with Sinhô.

“I told you to go to bed, Don' Ana,” her father said. “What are you waiting for?”

She then began reciting from memory, without looking at the book, her eyes fixed on his:

“Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go: and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.”

“This is no business for a woman,” Juca began; but Sinhô interrupted him.

“Let her stay. After all, she's a Badaró. One day it's going to be her children, Juca, who will gather the cacao from the Sequeiro Grande groves. You may stay, my daughter.”

Juca and Don' Ana sat down near him. They then began drawing up their battle plans for the possession of the Sequeiro Grande forest. Don' Ana Badaró was happy; her tawny face was lovelier than ever; her eyes were dark and glowing.

Round about the forest on this night of ambitions, longings, and the unleashed dreams of men, lights were glowing: kerosene chandeliers in Horacio's house, lights in the home of the Badarós. There was the lighted candle that Don' Ana had placed at the feet of the Virgin on the altar of the Big House to implore her assistance in the days to come. There was that other candle which illumined the way for the dead, as the two men bore their burden to the daughters in Ferradas. Lights on the Baraúnas plantation, where Juca Badaró and Maneca Dantas arrived at almost the same time for a talk with Teodoro. The light of red and smoky oil lamps in the workers' huts, as the inmates awoke earlier even than was their wont to hear the story of Negro Damião, who had missed his aim and who had run away none knew where. A light in Firmo's house, where Dona Tereza was awaiting her husband, her white body ready for love in the rosewood bed. Lights in the houses of the small grove-owners, awakened by the unexpected arrival of Firmo with Horacio's men, come to invite them to lunch that day. Round about the forest of Sequeiro Grande glowed the light of lanterns, chandeliers, hanging lamps, and lamps of a humbler kind. They served to mark the boundaries of the giant wood to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west.

From time to time men on horseback would cut through small stretches of the forest to reach the main road. They were those who were riding from plantation to plantation, from grove to grove, bearing the invitation to come and talk matters over. On every hand human ambition was kindling lights and galloping along the highway. But neither the lights nor the sound of beating hoofs could rouse those slumbering boughs and trunks from their sleep of centuries. The jaguars, the snakes, and the monkeys were at rest, and the birds had not as yet awaked to greet the dawn. Only the glowworms, spirit lanterns, lighted up with a greenish brightness the dark, dense green of the trees. The forest of Sequeiro Grande was asleep, as round about it men avid of money laid their concerted plans for its conquest. And there at the forest's heart, where the vegetation was thickest, with only the uncertain, wavering light of the glowworms for illumination, in his wretched hut Jeremias the witch-doctor also slept.

Like the trees and the animals, he was unaware that the forest was menaced, that it was being encircled by human ambition, and that the days of giant trunks, wild beasts, and ghostly shades were drawing to a close. He slept, as did the wood and the beasts. How many years was it that black Jeremias had been there, with his white woolly mop of hair, his eyes, which had long since lost their lustre and were all but blind, his bent and fleshless frame, his wrinkled face, his toothless mouth, and his voice that was but a murmur at the meaning of which one had to guess? There was no one for half a hundred miles around who could have told you. To all of them he was a woodland being, quite as much to be feared as were the jaguars and the snakes, as the trunks with their tangle of liana stalks, as the very spirits themselves, whom he directed and let loose. He was the lord and master of the forest of Sequeiro Grande, the possession of which Horacio and the Badarós were disputing. From the seashore, from the port of Ilhéos, all the way to the more distant town or village along the backlands road, people spoke of Jeremias the witch-doctor, who cured diseases, who fortified men's bodies against bullets and snake-bites, who provided remedies, also, for the ills of lovers, who knew the charms that would make a woman cling to a man as not even the viscous breadfruit did. His fame had gone through the cities and through the towns he had never seen, and the afflicted came from afar to consult him.

It had been on a day many years before, when the forest covered a great deal more of the land than it did now, when it extended in all directions and men had not thought of felling it to plant the cacao tree, which had not as yet been brought from Amazonia—it was then that Jeremias had taken up his abode in the wood. He had been a young Negro, fleeing from slavery. The “bush captains” had been on his trail, and he had come into the forest where the Indians dwelt and had never more emerged. He had come from a sugar plantation where his master was in the habit of having him flogged. For many years he bore upon his back the mark of the lash. Not even when his scars had at last disappeared, not even when they told him that the freeing of the slaves had been decreed, would he consent to leave the woods. All that had been long, long ago; Jeremias had lost track of time; he had also lost all recollection of those events. The only memory he had not lost was that of his Negro gods, whom his ancestors had brought with them from Africa and for whom he had been unwilling to substitute the Catholic divinities of his plantation masters. Here within the forest he lived in the company of Ogún, of Omulú, of Oxossi, and of Oxolufã, while from the Indians he had learned the secret of medicinal herbs. With his own black deities he was in the habit of mingling those of the aborigines, invoking now one and now another on those days when someone made his way to the heart of the forest to ask his advice or to seek a remedy of some kind. And many of them did come; they even came from the city; and before long the feet of the ailing and the anguish-ridden had beaten a path to his door.

He had seen the white men draw near this forest, he had seen other forests felled, he had seen the Indians flee to take refuge at a safer distance, he had witnessed the sprouting of the first cacao shoots, he had seen how the earliest plantations were formed. And all the while he had retired deeper and deeper within the wood; for there was a fear that lay heavy on his heart: the fear that one day they would come to cut down the forest of Sequeiro Grande also. For that day he had prophesied woes unending. To all who came to see him he would say that this forest was the abode of the gods, that each tree was sacred, and that if men dared to lay a hand upon it, the gods would exact a merciless vengeance.

He lived on herbs and roots, drank pure river water from the stream that ran through the forest, and in his hut he kept two tame snakes that greatly frightened his visitors. Not even the most feared of the colonels, not even Sinhô Badaró himself, who was the political chieftain and highly respected; not even Horacio, of whom they told all those stories; not even Teodoro das Baraúnas, who had a terrible reputation as a “bad man”; not even Brasilino, the very symbol of courage—none of them in all the São Jorge dos Ilhéos region inspired as much awe as did Jeremias the witch-doctor. For the powers at his command were supernatural ones; they could avert the course of bullets, could stop the assassin's upraised dagger, could turn into harmless water the poison of snakes deadlier, even, than the rattlesnake.

In his hut Jeremias the witch-doctor lay sleeping. His ears, however, which were attuned to all the noises of the forest, had caught, even in sleep, the sound of running feet. Opening his tired eyes, he raised his head from the earthen floor. In an effort to pierce with his vision the half-light of dawn, he drew his body, clad in tatters, to a sitting posture. The footfalls were coming nearer every moment; someone was running along the path that led to the hut. Someone in search of a remedy or of counsel, or who came with despair in his heart. Jeremias was long skilled in recognizing the anguish of human beings from the degree of rapidity with which they made their way through the woods. This one was despairing; he was running along the path; he must be bringing with him a heart laden with grief. As the witch-doctor squatted down to wait, the dim light filtering through the boughs fell upon a snake crawling over the floor of the hut. He waited. The one who was coming brought no light to show him the way; his suffering was sufficient guide. Jeremias muttered some words that were unintelligible.

And then, suddenly, Negro Damião burst into the hut, dropped to his knees, and began kissing Jeremias's hands.

“Father Jeremias, something terrible has happened to me. I can't tell you, I don't know how to begin. Father Jeremias, I'm ruined.”

The Negro was trembling all over; his enormous body was like a fragile bamboo stalk whipped by the wind on the river bank. Jeremias laid his fleshless hands on Damião's head.

“My son, there is no trouble that cannot be cured. Go ahead and tell me, and this old black man will give you a remedy.” His voice was weak, but his words carried the strength of conviction. Negro Damião drew nearer, dragging his knees along the earthen floor.

“My father, I can't tell you how it happened. Nothing like that ever happened to Negro Damião before. Ever since you gave me a charm against bullets, I never once missed a shot, I never was afraid of bringing down some poor fellow. I don't know how it happened, Father Jeremias, I was bewitched.”

Jeremias waited for the story in silence. Putting his hands on Damião's head was the only gesture that he had made. The snake had now stopped crawling and had curled up in the corner where the witch-doctor slept. Damião trembled as he went on, speaking now in a hurried voice and now slowly, as if searching for words.

“Sinhô Badaró sent me out to do away with a man. It was Mr. Firmo, the one who has the grove not far from here. I was in hiding along the side-road, and I saw a ghost, my father, I saw a ghost. It was his wife, Dona Tereza, and she put me out of my head.”

He paused. His heart was not big enough to contain the emotions that filled it to overflowing, emotions that were so new, so unfamiliar.

“Go on and tell me, my son.”

“I was waiting for him, and his wife came along; she had a kid in the belly, and she told me the child was going to die and that Negro Damião would be the death of all three of them. That made me soft, it got me, it put something into my head, it took the strength out of my hand, it took the aim from my eye. It was witchcraft, father; Negro Damião missed his shot. And now what is Sinhô Badaró going to say? He's a good man, good and kind to Negro Damião, and I betrayed him. I didn't kill the man, it was witchcraft. Give me a charm, father!”

Jeremias stood there, his body rigid, his half-blind eyes staring into space. He realized that behind Negro Damião's story there was another one that was far more important, that beyond the fate of this black man lay that of the entire forest of Sequeiro Grande.

“Why did Sinhô want to have Firmo done away with?”

“Mr. Firmo wouldn't sell his grove, so that Sinhô could get into the forest, father. And I betrayed him, I didn't bring the man down, his wife's eyes took the courage out of my bosom. That's the truth, father, I swear it is; it's no lie this Negro's telling you.”

Jeremias drew himself erect. He needed no staff now to support his centenarian's frame. In two strides he was at the door of the hut, where his half-seeing eyes had a view of the forest in all its splendour. At the same time he beheld the path that led from those distant days of the past down to this morning which was to mark his end. He knew that men were coming into the woods, knew that they were going to fell them, that they were going to kill off the animals and plant cacao on the land where the forest of Sequeiro Grande once had stood. He could see the smoke from the flames writhing among the lianas, licking the tree-trunks, could hear the howls of the jaguars as they fled, the hiss of the burning snakes. He could see the men with their axes and their pruning-knives completing the work of the flames, stripping the earth, laying it bare, digging up even the deepest roots of the trees. What he did not see was Negro Damião, who had betrayed his employer and was kneeling there, weeping for his treason. He saw, instead, the devastated wood, felled and burned over, he saw the cacao trees springing up, and a tremendous hatred took possession of him. When he spoke, it was no longer to mutter as he always did, nor did he address himself to Negro Damião, who was trembling and weeping, waiting for the words that should dispel his suffering. Jeremias's words were addressed to his gods, to his own gods, those gods that had come from the jungles of Africa—to Ogún, Oxossi, Yansan, Oxolufã, Omolú—and to Exú, as well, who was the Devil himself. He was calling upon them now to unloose their wrath upon those who were coming to disturb the peace of their dwelling-place.

“Piety is dried up, and they are eyeing the forest with the eye of the wicked. They shall enter the forest, now; but before they enter, they shall die, men and women and little ones, even unto the beasts of the field. They shall die, until there is no longer any hole in which to bury them, until the buzzards have had their fill of flesh, until the earth shall be red with blood. A river shall flow in the highways, and in it relatives, neighbours, friends shall be drowned, and not a one shall escape. They shall enter the forest, but it shall be over the bodies of their own dead. For each tree, each sapling that they fell, a man shall be felled, and the buzzards shall be so many in number as to hide the sun. Human flesh shall be the fertilizer that they spread for their cacao shoots, and every shrub shall be watered with their blood—with the blood of all of them, all, all—for none shall escape, not a man, woman, child, or beast.”

Once again he called upon the names of his beloved deities. He called upon Exú as well, entrusting to him the vengeance that he sought, as his voice rang out through the forest, awakening the birds, the monkeys, the snakes, and the jaguars. Then one last time he shouted, and this time it was a curse, a flaming curse:

“Each son shall plant his cacao tree on the banks of a river flowing with his father's blood.”

He then gazed fixedly at the dawn, which was greeted by the trill of birds above the forest of Sequeiro Grande. His body was giving way; the effort he had made had been en enormous one. His body was yielding, his eyes were closing wholly now, his legs bent beneath him, and he sank to the earthen floor, his feet touching Negro Damião, who was beside himself with fear. Not one sigh, one moan, came from his lips, but in his death-agony Jeremias strove to repeat his curse, his mouth still writhing with hatred. In the trees the birds were warbling their early morning song. The forest of Sequeiro Grande was flooded with the light of dawn.