The Violent Land (37 page)

The city of Ilhéos awoke in a state of feverish excitement. Its streets were carpeted with flowers, flags hung from the house windows, and bells were pealing merrily on this festive morning. A huge crowd was on its way down to the waterfront and filled the pier to overflowing. The pupils from the schools marched in a body: the young women from Our Lady of Victory Seminary, which was the nuns' school (the building had recently been completed, on top of the hill overlooking the city); the boys and girls from the private institutions; and finally the children of the poor from the public school. They all were in holiday garb, and the nuns' charges each wore a blue ribbon symbolizing the religious confraternity to which she belonged. There was a band as well, in showy red and black uniforms, playing a lively air on this day of stir and bustle. Braz was in command of the police troopers, who carried rifles on their shoulders, and on the crowded pier were all the most important citizens of the town, clad in the black Prince Alberts they donned on state occasions. Dr. Jessé, the present prefect of Ilhéos, was sweating in a stiff collar and was doing his best to remember the words of the speech he was shortly to deliver, which he had spent two whole days in embellishing. Sinhô Badaró was there also, with his daughter and son-in-law. The colonel still limped a little in his right leg, where he had been wounded at the time of the assault on the Big House. Here at the waterfront today members of the government party and members of the opposition mingled together, along with priests and nuns. Even Friar Bento had come down from Ferradas and stood conversing with some of the sisters in that foreign-sounding voice of his. Business houses were closed for the day, for everybody had gone to meet the boat.

The wine-shop kept by the Spaniard, which was near the wharves, was filled with customers. The man with the false ring, who had generously forgiven the Spaniard for having turned him in to the police, was talking to the man in the sky-blue vest.

“And now,” he was saying, “it's a Bishop—what's a Bishop that they have to make so much fuss over him? Why, I once knew an Archbishop, down south. And do you know what he looked like? Like a broiled lobster, that's what!”

The man in the sky-blue vest did not argue the matter. It might be the truth, who could say? In any event, the first Bishop of Ilhéos was arriving this morning; for a recent papal decree had elevated the city from a parish to a diocese, and a canon from Parahyba had been consecrated Bishop. According to the newspapers of Bahia, he was a man of great virtues and great learning; but for the residents of Ilhéos he was
their
Bishop, a symbol of the importance their city had achieved, a sign of progress. Despite the lack of religious sentiment that, if one was to believe Canon Freitas, was so characteristic of this region, the town was proud of the honour the Church had conferred upon it and was prepared to give the first incumbent a right royal welcome.

People now came running down the beach: the boat had been sighted, out near the Rapa rock. Men and women, meanwhile, were still hurrying down the street on their way to the pier. The pious old ladies wore black shawls over their heads and were so nervous that for once they had lost their tongues. The young girls and their swains took advantage of the occasion to do a bit of ogling, and even the prostitutes had put in an appearance. The last, however, gazed on from a distance, having formed a convivial group in back of the booths where fish were sold. There were numerous priests in the throng also, and the inhabitants could not help wondering where they had all come from. They were from the towns of the interior, the vicars of Itapira and Barra do Rio de Contas having made a long and tiresome journey to pay their respects to the new Bishop.

The big carpet from the grand staircase of the prefecture had been laid upon the pier, and over this the Bishop was to pass.

The boat, decked out with flags, was now crossing the bar, and its whistle could be heard from a distance. Rockets went up in the air from the island of Pontal, and the police troopers discharged their rifles in a mock salute. The priests, the prefect, the colonels, and the nuns, the wealthy merchants as well, all crowded forward, and as the ship drew up to the pier, the sky above the city was filled with exploding rockets and the bells pealed, as the Bishop, a short, fat little man, descended the gangplank and Dr. Jessé began his address of welcome.

The crowd accompanied the prelate to the home of Canon Freitas, where breakfast was served for the select few, and that afternoon there was a solemn benediction in the Cathedral of St. George. Maneca Dantas had brought his children along, and his son Ruy declaimed a few verses by way of welcome to the “spiritual father.” The Bishop praised the precocious lad's intelligence. Sinhô Badaró likewise paid a visit to ask a blessing for his grandchild that was about to be born.

That night there were more fireworks, while at the prefecture a state banquet was held, the tribute of the city of Ilhéos to its first Bishop. The new prosecutor spoke in the name of the people, and the guest of honour said a few words in reply, expressive of his happiness at finding himself among the
grapiúnas
. Following the banquet the Bishop withdrew, for he was tired; but the festivities kept up until a late hour, and it was two o'clock in the morning when Lawyer Ruy, thoroughly drunk, staggered out into the street. Finding no one with whom to talk, he went down to the waterfront and there, happening to run into the man with the false ring, he proceeded, for want of any other listener, to expound to him his view of things.

“In this land, my son, a cacao grove can even produce a Bishop. It produces railroads, assassins, ousters, town houses, cafés, schools, theatres—even a Bishop. Yes, this country doesn't only yield cacao, it yields everything.”

All of which was not quite in keeping with an article that Lawyer Ruy had published that day in
A Folha de Ilhéos
. For the first and only time that paper and
O Comercio
found themselves in full agreement. Both praised the city and the municipality for the progress they had achieved; both stressed the importance of the Bishop's coming; and both prophesied a brilliant future for the town.

“Its elevation to a diocese,” wrote Manuel de Oliveira, “is no more than a recognition of the dizzying progress which Ilhéos has made, a progress that is due to the efforts of those great men who sacrificed everything for their country's good.”

“Ilhéos, cradle of so many sons of toil,” wrote Lawyer Ruy, “of so many men of character and intelligence who have blazed the path for civilization in the black and barbarous land of cacao . . .”

In the meantime, still trying to steady himself on his feet, Lawyer Ruy was bellowing to the man with the false ring:

“Cacao, my son, is everything. It even yields a Bishop at the foot of the tree—even a Bishop.”

To the man with the false ring nothing in the world was impossible.

“It may be,” he said, “who knows?”

Following the election that elevated Dr. Jessé Freitas to the Federal Chamber as a government party deputy (“What's that jackass going to do there?” Lawyer Ruy had inquired of his acquaintances), and which at the same time transformed the interventor into the constitutional Governor of the state of Bahia, a decree was issued creating the municipality of Itabuna, which was thereby dismembered from Ilhéos. The seat of the new municipality was to be the former borough of Tabocas, now the city of Itabuna. A bridge, in the interim, had been constructed joining the two portions of the town on either side of the river.

Horacio, who had picked Maneca Dantas to succeed Dr. Jessé as prefect of Ilhéos, now chose for the corresponding post in Itabuna that same hardware dealer, Azevedo, who had been the Badarós' devoted follower and who had gone bankrupt on their account. For Azevedo could not stand being the under-dog in politics and had come to an agreement with Horacio. His electors had voted for Dr. Jessé for deputy and so, in exchange, he was given the new prefecture.

It was the day for the new municipal government to take over, and a triumphal arch of flowering cacao boughs had been erected in Church Square. Within record time they had thrown up a modern building to house the prefect, and a special train from Ilhéos now brought Horacio, the Bishop, Maneca Dantas, the judge, the prosecutor, planters and merchants, married women and young ladies. At the station the residents of Itabuna crowded forward to grasp Horacio's hand.

The inaugural ceremony was an impressive one. Azevedo, having taken the oath of office, delivered a speech in which he further swore undying loyalty to the Governor of the state and to Colonel Horacio da Silveira, “that benefactor of the cacao region.” Horacio looked on, his eyes very small, as someone at his side, alluding to Azevedo's turncoat propensities, remarked: “Anyone who didn't know you, colonel, would say that you'd bought an old nag.”

“He'll go all right, with a tight rein,” was Horacio's reply.

In the afternoon there was a fair with an auction of gifts in the public square, and that evening a grand ball was staged in the main room of the prefecture. The Bishop did not deem it fitting to be present in the ballroom, but he was ensconced in another room, where a buffet supper was being served, consisting of sweets of various kinds, under the auspices of the Pereira sisters—“real artists,” according to Maneca Dantas, who was a connoisseur in such matters. There were all kinds of drinks as well, everything from champagne to rum.

Round the Bishop a circle had been formed—Horacio, Maneca, Azevedo, the judge, Braz, and various others—and the finest of fine goblets were now filled with the finest of wine. Someone proposed a toast to the Bishop; and then the prosecutor of Ilhéos suggested that, by way of showing their gratitude to the colonel, they drink a toast to Horacio. In the course of his remarks he took occasion, innocently enough, to express a regret that “in this hour of the city's great triumph Colonel Horacio da Silveira could not have at his side his devoted wife of ever living memory, Dona Ester, that self-sacrificing martyr to a true wife's love for her husband—or that other townsman of theirs, whose memory likewise was with them always and who had contributed so much to the progress of the new municipality of Itabuna—Dr. Virgilio Cabral, who had died at the hands of his cowardly political enemies.” But those days, the speaker went on to assert, while still quite recent, were a thing of the past now; they belonged to a time when civilization had not yet reached this region, a time when Itabuna was still Tabocas.

“Today,” he concluded, “all this is no more than a painful memory.”

The prosecutor then raised his glass in a toast. Horacio clinked glasses with him, and together they drank to the memory of Ester and Virgilio. As the rims of their goblets met, little clear-ringing sounds were heard.

“Baccarat crystal,” Horacio observed to the Bishop, who was seated at his side.

And he gave a calm and satisfied laugh.

It ordinarily takes five years for cacao trees to bear their first fruit, but those that were planted on the Sequeiro Grande tract began budding at the end of the third year and were yielding fruit the year following. Even those agricultural experts who had studied in the schools, even the old planters who knew cacao as no one else did, were astonished at the size of the nuts that these groves so precociously produced. Those nuts were enormous ones, and the trees were laden with them to their topmost boughs.
Nothing of the kind had ever been seen before; for this was the best land in the world for the planting of cacao, a land fertilized with human blood.

Boi tátá
(bôh-e tah´tah´). Mythical fire-breathing ox.

Caapora
(kah-poh´rah). A goblin.

Caboclo
(kah-boh´kloo). A Brazilian Indian (literally, “copper-coloured”).

Cabra
(kah´brah). Term applied to the offspring of a mulatto and a Negro; comes to mean, in general, a backwoods assassin. Cf.
capanga, jagunço
.

Capanga
(kah-pahn´gah). Hired assassin; backwoods Negro. Cf.
cabra, jagunço
.

Carioca
(kah-ree-oh´kah). Resident of Rio de Janeiro.

Cigarro
(see-gahr´roo). A cigarette made with millet straw, with the aid of a penknife; or, simply, cigarette.

Conquistador
(kohn-kees´tah-dohr). Literally, a “conqueror”; one who opens up a new country.

Conto
(kohn´too). Brazilian coin worth 1,000,000 reis (
q.v.
), or, at the time of this story, a little more than $500 (about $546).

Fazenda
(fah-zen´dah). A plantation; in this book, a cacao plantation.

Fazendeiro
(fah-zen-day-ee´roo). A plantation-owner, a planter.

Grapiúna
(grah-pee-oo´nah). Resident of the Ilhéos cacao region.

Jagunço
(zhah-goon´soo). This term was originally applied to ruffians at a fair; from this it derived the meaning of back-country ruffian, which is the sense that it has in this book (cf.
cabra, capanga
); is sometimes used as practically synonymous with
sertanejo,
or inhabitant of the backlands.

Milrei
(meel´ray-ee). Brazilian coin worth 1,000 reis, or about 54 cents in United States currency.

Mingau
(meen´gow). A dish (paste) made of manihot flour, sugar, and eggs.

Rei
(ray´ee). Brazilian monetary unit, worth one twentieth of a cent.

Tirana
(tee-rah´nah). A melancholy love-song, slow in movement, on the theme of love's “tyranny.”