The Violent Land

by Jorge Amado

  And so it was that when Sinhô had finished climbing the stairs of Zude Brothers and Company and pushed open the door of the manager’s office, Maximiliano Campos hastily rose and came forward to grasp his hand.

  “What a surprise, colonel!” He offered his visitor the best chair in the room, his own, and seated himself on one made of cane. “It’s been some time since I saw you. Not since I was down at your place, negotiating for your crop.”

  “That’s where I’ve been—hard at work.”

  “And how are things going, colonel? What do you think of the crop this year? Strikes me as being a good deal better than last year’s, eh? We’ve bought more cacao here in the last month than we did in twelve months last season. And this in spite of the fact that some of the big planters like yourself, sir, have not sold as yet.”

  “That’s what I came to see you about,” said Sinhô. Maximiliano Campos at once became even more courteous than he had been before.

  “You have made up your mind, then, not to wait for a better price? I think you are doing the right thing, sir. I don’t believe cacao is going to bring more than fourteen milreis the hundred-weight this year—and mark you, at fourteen milreis, planting cacao is more profitable than saying High Mass.” He laughed at his own figure of speech.

  “Personally, friend Maximiliano, I think it is going to bring more—fifteen milreis at least, at the end of the season. Whoever is in a position to hold on to his cacao is going to make a lot of money. The production will not be up to the demand. They tell me that in the United States—”

  Maximiliano Campos shook his head. “It is true we are able to place all the cacao we can get. But this business of prices, colonel, it is the gringos who determine that. Our cacao doesn’t stand a chance compared to that from the Gold Coast. And it is England that fixes the price. When you gentlemen have brought this whole region under cultivation, when you have cleared all the jungle land that’s still left around here, then it may be we shall be able to dictate prices to the United States.”

  Sinhô Badaró rose from his chair, his beard falling down over his cravat and shirt-front.

  “That is just what I mean to do, friend Maximiliano. I am going to cut down the forest of Sequeiro Grande and plant it in cacao. Five years from now I’ll be selling you the crop from that land, and then we shall have our say as to what the price is to be.”

  This was no news to Maximiliano. Who in Ilhéos did not by this time know of the Badarós’ plans with respect to that forest? But they also knew that Horacio had identical plans. Maximiliano now mentioned that fact.

  “The forest is mine,” Sinhô Badaró informed him. “This very day I intend to enter title to it in the registry office of Domingos Reis. And God help any man who meddles with it.” He said this with an air of determination, and Maximiliano Campos fell back before his outstretched finger. Sinhô, however, laughed and went on to speak of the business in hand.

  “I want to sell my crop,” he said. “As of now I’m selling twelve thousand hundredweight. Today’s price is fourteen milreis two hundred. That makes a hundred and seventy contos de reis. Is that right?”

  Maximiliano did some figuring. “And how about payment?” he said as he looked up and removed his glasses.

  “I don’t want any money down. What I want is to open a credit account for myself. I am going to need an advance for the felling of the forest and the planting of the groves. I’ll draw a little out every week.”

  “A hundred and seventy contos and four hundred milreis,” announced Maximiliano as he completed his calculations.

  They then went on to discuss the details. The Badarós had been selling their cacao to Zude Brothers and Company for a number of years, and for none of their clients in southern Bahia did the export house have so much respect as for the brothers Badaró. Sinhô now took his leave; he would be back the next day to sign the bill of sale.

  “Yes,” he said before leaving the office, “I shall be needing money to fell the forest and plant cacao—and to fight, also, if I have to, friend Maximiliano.” His face was grave and there was a hard look in his eye as he stroked his beard with his hand. Maximiliano did not know what reply to make.

  “And your daughter, Don’ Ana, how is she?”

  Sinhô’s face instantly lost its hardness and expanded in a smile. “Ah, there’s a girl for you! And pretty, too! It won’t be long before she’s married.”

  Maximiliano accompanied the colonel downstairs and into the street, where he left him with a prolonged handshake. “My very best wishes to all the family, colonel.”

  Sinhô Badaró went down the centre of the street, his hand constantly to his hat as he returned the greetings from all sides. Men even crossed the street to say how-do-you-do to him.

  9

  The bells were pealing out on the afternoon of St. George’s Day. This was the major event of its kind in Ilhéos, being the feast-day of the city’s patron saint. The prefect that morning, at the municipal building, had read a proclamation in which he recalled the memory of that Jorge de Figueredo Correia who had held the captaincy of Ilhéos and who had founded the first rude sugar-mills, which the Indians had later destroyed; and those who came after him, bringing the cacao shrub, were then duly commemorated. Lawyer Genaro had made a speech full of quotations in some foreign language that most of his listeners could not understand.

  In these official ceremonies Horacio’s supporters had taken no part; but they were all there, in their black Prince Alberts, going down the streets to the cathedral, from which the procession was to issue to wend its way through the city’s principal thoroughfares. Canon Freitas always strove to remain above the battle in which the political quarrels of the big land-holding colonels were involved; he never got mixed up in them, but contrived to be on amicable terms with the Badarós and with Horacio, with the prefect of Ilhéos, and with Dr. Jessé. If there was a subscription under way for the nuns’ school building fund, he would have two copies prepared, so that neither Sinhô Badaró nor Horacio would have to sign on the second line. The result was that each was quite pleased at being handed a blank sheet of paper, thinking that he was the first to put down his name, and this clever bit of strategy had the effect of bringing the government and opposition parties together around the Church.

  Canon Freitas, for the matter of that, was quite liberal-minded. He never, for example, made any fuss over the fact that a majority of the wealthy planters were members of the Masonic Lodge. It is true, he had lent his aid to Sinhô Badaró when the latter opposed Masonry (because the lodge had elected Horacio as Grand Master), but he had done so without appearing in the picture, from behind the scenes always. The one open fight that he waged was against the religion of the Englishmen, the Protestant Church. Otherwise he sought to preserve a nice balance. At the novenas to St. Anthony, if Horacio’s lady served as patroness for one, it was Juca Badaró’s wife and Don’ Ana who did the honours for the other; and at night on such occasions the two rivals would try to outdo each other in a lavish display of rockets and Roman candles. In the month of May, similarly, he would assign one of them a High Mass and the other the care of the altar. Whenever he could, he played upon this rivalry; and when it was to his interest, he endeavoured to bring about harmony.

  Lined up around the square stood the men, buttoned in their black Prince Alberts, while the womenfolk hurried into the church. Ester went by on Horacio’s arm, looking very fashionable in her clothes, which reminded her of her school days with the nuns in Bahia. Seeing her, Virgilio removed his derby hat in greeting. Horacio waved his hand, and Ester nodded as the bystanders whispered to one another with sarcastic smiles. Sinhô and Juca Badaró came next, the former with his daughter and the latter with his wife. It was now Captain João Magalhães’s turn to remove his top-hat and bow low in greeting. In somewhat scandalous defiance of custom he wore a grey Prince Albert. Sinhô raised his hand to his hat-brim and Don’ Ana bur
ied her face in her fan.

  “Hello, there, captain!” Juca shouted to him.

  “They’re sweeties,” said a girl standing near.

  Dr. Jessé came along, perspiring freely and almost on the run. He paused for a moment to speak to Virgilio, then hurried on. Lawyer Genaro followed, grave and solemn-faced, walking with measured stride, his eyes on the ground. The prefect passed, followed by Maneca Dantas, Dona Auricidia, and the young ones. Teodoro das Baraúnas was dressed in his everyday clothes, with the exception that, in place of khaki breeches he wore a pair of perfectly starched white ones, while on his finger gleamed his enormous solitaire.

  Margot also put in an appearance. She did not go into the church, however, but stood in a corner of the square conversing with Manuel de Oliveira. The women bystanders shot her glances out of the corner of their eyes as they remarked on her dress and behaviour.

  “She’s Juca Badaró’s new sweetheart,” one of them said.

  “They say she used to be Lawyer Virgilio’s.”

  “He’s got something better now.” They all laughed.

  Men in bare feet stood at the edge of the crowd, which was now overflowing the church and the square and spreading out through the streets. Canon Freitas and two other priests came out the door and began organizing the procession. First came the bier with the Christ Child, a small image. It was borne by white-clad children, selected from among the best families, one of them being Maneca Dantas’s son. The procession then started off down the street with a band at the head of it. The Christ Child was followed by school children in uniform, under the eyes of their teachers. As soon as there was room, the bier with the Virgin Mary emerged, carried by young women of the city, one of them Don’ Ana Badaró. As she passed, she glanced at João Magalhães and smiled, and the captain could not help thinking that she resembled the Virgin, despite the fact that she was brown-skinned while the image was of blue porcelain.

  As the band and the school children proceeded on their way, the men stood silently, hat in hand, along the line of march. Also dressed in white, with the blue ribbons of religious confraternities about their throats, the nuns’ school pupils took their places behind the Virgin. Then came the ladies: Juca’s wife on the arm of her husband; and Ester with a woman friend, Maneca Dantas’s wife, Dona Auricidia, who thought that everything was just too lovely. Finally space was made so that the litter bearing the image of St. George, a large and richly adorned one, could join the procession. The saint, a huge figure, mounted on his horse, was engaged in slaying the dragon. The litter was drawn by Horacio and Sinhô Badaró in the front shafts, while the rear ones were manned by Lawyer Genaro and Dr. Jessé. These latter two were conversing like friends, but not so Horacio and Sinhô—they did not so much as glance at each other, but went along with serious mien, careful to keep in step, but gazing straight ahead. The four litter-bearers wore red robes over their black Prince Alberts.

  Bringing up the rear came Canon Freitas with a priest on either side of him and all the important personages of the city: the prefect, the deputy, the judge, the prosecutor, a number of lawyers and doctors, the surveying engineers, the colonels, and the merchants. Maneca Dantas and Ferreirinha, Teodoro, and Lawyer Ruy were among this number. And last of all the crowd fell in: pious old ladies, women of the town, fishermen, street labourers, and men and women in their bare feet, the women carrying their shoes in their hands in fulfilment of vows made to the saint.

  The band struck up and the procession got under way, slowly and in orderly fashion.

  Almost at the same moment Lawyer Virgilio and Captain João Magalhães left their places on the sidewalk and joined the throng behind the Virgin’s bier. Juca Badaró and Virgilio had just exchanged a cool greeting when the captain came up, proffering some sweets that he had bought. Upon hearing his voice Don’ Ana threw the bier off balance as she turned to glance back at him. The other women laughed softly.

  A group of men had gathered around Margot to watch the procession pass.

  “Well, what do you know about that?” said one of them. “Colonel Horacio and Sinhô Badaró side by side! And Dr. Jessé with Lawyer Genaro. It’s a miracle, that’s what it is!”

  For the moment Manuel de Oliveira forgot that he was the editor of the Badarós’ newspaper.

  “And each of them,” he remarked caustically, “is praying to the saint to help him kill the other one. They’re praying and threatening each other.”

  Margot and the others laughed. Then they, too, joined the procession, which, like an enormous serpent, was crawling slowly through the narrow streets of Ilhéos. Rockets were bursting in the air.

  V

  THE STRUGGLE

  1

  Whence came those strains of a guitar on this night without a moon? The song was a mournful one, a nostalgic melody that spoke of death. Sinhô Badaró ordinarily did not spend any time in reflection on the sad-sounding words and music of the airs that were sung by Negro, mulatto, and white workers here in the land of cacao; but tonight, jogging along on his black horse, he could feel the sadness laying hold of him; and for some reason, he could not have told you why, he thought of the figures in the picture on the parlour wall of the Big House. That music must be coming from a grove, from a house somewhere, hidden away among the cacao trees. It was a man’s voice, and Sinhô wondered why the Negroes should spend a good part of the night strumming their guitars when the time that they had for sleeping was so short. Still that air accompanied him at every turn of the road, at times but a murmur and then suddenly swelling as if it were very near:

  Mine is a hopeless life,

  Working night and day. . . .

  Behind him Sinhô Badaró could hear the hoofs of the burros ridden by his capangas. There were three of these men: the mulatto, Viriato; Telmo, a tall, skinny fellow with an effeminate voice, but a dead shot with a rifle; and Costinha, the one who had killed Colonel Jacinto. They were talking as they rode along, and fragments of their conversation were borne to Sinhô on the night breeze:

  “The fellow put his hand on the door—there was a rumpus.”

  “Did you shoot?”

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “You always get in trouble when you get mixed up with a woman.”

  Had Negro Damião been there, Sinhô would have called to him and had him come up and ride alongside him; he would have told him of some of his plans and the Negro would have listened in silence, nodding his enormous head in approval. But Damião now was a half-witted creature, wandering along the highways, laughing and crying like a child, and Sinhô had had a hard time in preventing Juca from having him put out of his misery. On one occasion, weeping and wailing, he had come near the plantation, and those who had seen him said that they would not have recognized him, he was so skinny and all covered with woolly hair, while his eyes were sunken in his head, as he went around muttering things about dead children and the white bellies of angels. He had been a good Negro, and to this day Sinhô Badaró could not understand how he had come to miss his aim that night he had fired on Firmo. Could he have been out of his mind even then? The song, reaching him once more at the bend of the road, brought back the memory of that afternoon, and Sinhô again recalled the picture on the parlour wall: the flute-playing shepherds and the countryside, the blue peace of the sky. It must have been a merry tune, with gentle words of love. A tune to dance by, for the lass had a foot in the air. Not a mournful tune such as the one that came to him now, which was more like a funeral chant:

  My life is a burden and I am tired;

  I came here and my feet were mired,

  Shackled with cacao. . . .

  Sinhô Badaró looked about him on both sides of the road. That song must be coming from some worker’s hut in the vicinity. Or could it be someone going along the side-road, a guitar slung over his shoulder, and killing the tedium of his journey with music? For a quarter of an hour now the singer
had been keeping up with Sinhô’s party, lamenting the life that he was compelled to lead in this land, singing of toil and death and the fate of those who were caught in the cacao country. But accustomed as they were to the darkness of night, Sinhô’s eyes could not make out any light in the vicinity. All that they encountered was another pair of eyes, belonging to an owl that was hooting ominously. Yes, it must be someone coming along the side-road; but if music was rendering his journey shorter, it was making Sinhô’s homeward-bound one seem all the longer.

  For these were dangerous roads, now that there was no longer any tranquility round about the forest of Sequeiro Grande. That afternoon when he had given orders for Negro Damião to do away with Firmo, he had still had hopes. But now it was too late. War had been declared, and Horacio was already going into the forest, was getting his men ready, and had filed suit in Ilhéos for possession of the land. On that afternoon, with the European shepherd lass doing her dance, Sinhô Badaró had had his hopes. Again that man’s voice, singing. It surely must be someone approaching along the side-road, for the song was growing in volume and in mournfulness:

  When I die,

  They’ll carry me in a swaying hammock.

  Many hammocks would be going along the roads now; it was a scene that would be repeated on many nights. And blood would drip from those hammocks to sprinkle the earth. This was no land for rosy-cheeked shepherd lasses, rustic dances, and sky-blue backgrounds. This was a black land—but good for cacao-planting, the best in the world. The voice was coming closer still, singing its song of death: