The Violent Land

by Jorge Amado

  When I die,

  Bury me beside the road. . . .

  There were many nameless crosses along the side of the road, marking the graves of men who had died from bullets or of fever—and from the thrust of a dagger, too—on nights of crime or when the plague was stalking the countryside. But still the cacao trees grew and bore fruit, and friend Maximiliano was saying that, on a day when all the forests should have been felled and the land planted, they would dictate their own price to the North American dealers. They would have more cacao than the English, and in New York Sinhô Badaró’s name would be known as that of the proprietor of the cacao plantations of São Jorge dos Ilhéos. He would be richer than Misael. And Horacio would be left beside the road, while nameless crosses would mark the last resting place of Firmo and Braz, of Jarde and Zé da Ribeira.

  They had willed it that way. Sinhô Badaró himself would have preferred things as they were in that chromo, with everyone dancing merrily to flutes on a field of heavenly blue. It was all Horacio’s fault. Why did he have to come meddling with land that was not his, that could only belong to the Badarós, that no one would think of disputing with them? Horacio was the one who had willed it like that; Sinhô would have preferred a holiday, a lass with her foot in the air beginning a dance over the flowering greensward. Some day it would be like that here, the way it was in Europe. And a smile spread over Sinhô Badaró’s face, above his beard, as if, like a prophet or a fortune-teller with cards, he were reading the future.

  At the bend where the side-road forked off from the highway the man with the guitar appeared:

  When I die,

  Bury me ’neath a cacao tree. . . .

  But the sound of hoofs drowned out the song, and Sinhô was suddenly conscious of its absence. He was no longer seeing a country maiden dancing in the land of cacao, but planted forests and prices dictated from Ilhéos. He saw the man with fingers on his guitar as his feet plodded down the muddy road. Emerging upon the highway, he stood aside to permit Sinhô Badaró and his lads to pass.

  “Good evening, boss.”

  “Good evening.” And the cabras replied in chorus: “Pleasant journey.”

  “May Our Lord go with you.”

  The song died away in the distance as the man strumming his guitar was left farther and farther behind, until soon his voice was no longer audible as he went on singing his mournful refrains, as he went on lamenting the life that he had to lead and asking to be buried beneath a cacao tree. The saying was that it was the cacao slime that trapped men’s feet and held them here. Sinhô Badaró did not know of a single one who had gone back. He knew many who mourned their fate, just as this Negro did, who mourned it day and night, in the huts, in the wine-shops, in the offices, in the café—many who said that this was an ugly country and an unlucky one as well, a world’s end of a place, with no amusements and no pleasure to be had, where people killed for the sake of killing, and where one was rich today and tomorrow poorer than Job. Sinhô Badaró knew many of this kind; he had listened to such talk dozens of times; he had seen men sell their groves, get their money together, and swear that they were leaving never to return. They would set out for Ilhéos expecting to catch the first boat that left for Bahia. Bahia was a big city; they had everything there: fine stores, comfortable houses, theatres, everything a man could wish for; you had money in your pocket and could enjoy life. But before the boat had sailed the man would be back, the viscous cacao would have clung to his feet and held him, and he would once more sink his money in a piece of land and start planting. Some who did succeed in going, after having made the trip by sea, when they arrived in Bahia were unable to talk of anything but the land they had left behind, the Ilhéos country. And it was certain, as certain as his name was Sinhô Badaró, that after six months or a year had passed, the same individual would return, minus his money, to start the same life again. They said that the cacao clung to a man’s feet and he could never leave. That was what the songs said, the songs that were sung on plantation nights.

  Sinhô and his men were now among the cacao trees; for this was the Widow Merenda’s grove, on the edge of the forest of Sequeiro Grande. Sinhô Badaró had heard that she had made an agreement with Horacio; but this would not prevent his taking advantage of the side-road that shortened his journey by something like a mile. If she was with Horacio, so much the worse for her and for her two sons, for then these groves would be added to the new ones that the Badarós meant to plant on the land where the forest stood now. Within five years Sinhô would be entering the offices of Zude Brothers and Company to sell them the cacao from these new plantations. He had said it, and so it would be; for he was not a man to go back on his word. That shepherd lass who was just beginning her dance in the picture on the parlour wall—she would be dancing over a field of golden-yellow with ripened cacao, which was much prettier than that blue in the chromo. Much prettier.

  The first shot was accompanied by many others. Sinhô Badaró barely had time to rein back his horse, which received the bullet in its belly and fell over on one side. His jagunços were dismounting and taking shelter behind their kneeling burros. Sinhô meanwhile was striving to free his leg, which had been caught beneath his dying mount. His eyes sought to pierce the darkness, and even from where he lay he was able to make out Horacio’s ruffians lying in ambush behind some breadfruit trees near the road.

  “There they are, behind that tree,” he said.

  Following the first shots there was a dead silence as Sinhô still tried to work his leg free. Having succeeded in doing so, he rose to his full height and a bullet tore through his hat. Firing his pistol, he shouted to his men: “Come on, we’ll finish them off!”

  The head of one of the attacking party appeared from behind the breadfruit tree as the fellow took aim. Telmo was standing at Sinhô’s side. “I’ll take care of him, boss,” he said in his effeminate voice. With this he raised his rifle and the man’s head tossed and dropped like an overripe fruit. Sinhô advanced, firing as he went. He and his men were now sheltered by a cluster of cacao trees, from where they had a sight of the enemy in his hiding-place. There were five of the latter all together, counting the one who had been killed. The Widow Merenda’s two boys and three more of Horacio’s capangas were there. Sinhô levelled his weapon and fired from behind Viriato. Meanwhile they were advancing through the trees, for Sinhô’s plan was to fall upon their opponents from the rear. The latter, however, perceived this manoeuvre and in order to avoid it deemed it best to retire a short distance. As they did so, Sinhô got another of them. The man fell writhing, one hand and a foot in the air, and Viriato disposed of him.

  “That will be enough, you son of a bitch. This is no time for dancing.”

  In the midst of all the fracas Sinhô remembered the girl in the picture, with one foot upraised. This was no time for dancing. Viriato was right. They went on. A bullet caught Costinha in the shoulder and the blood spattered down on the tip of Sinhô Badaró’s boots.

  “It’s nothing,” said Costinha, “only a scratch.” And he kept on firing.

  They continued circling around, and the three men left in the hiding-place, seeing that the game was up, took to their heels through the grove. Sinhô fired his pistol in the direction in which they had fled and then went over to the black horse he had ridden and laid his hand on the animal’s neck, which was still warm. The blood was flowing from its belly, making a little pool on the ground. Telmo came up and began removing the saddle, as Viriato went in search of his burro, which had strayed some little distance while the shooting was going on. Sinhô now mounted the donkey and Telmo put the horse’s harness on his own burro. Viriato rode on Costinha’s beast, with the wounded man on the crupper behind, holding a hand to his shoulder to stop the blood.

  Thus mounted they went on down the road, Sinhô still grasping his pistol. There was an almost mournful look in his eyes as he endeavoured to penetrate the darkness round abou
t him. But there was no music now, no voice singing of the troubles of this land. There was no faintest bit of moon to light the corpses beside the cacao trees. Behind him Telmo, with his high-pitched voice which was like a woman’s, was boasting vaingloriously:

  “I got the bastard, right through the head.”

  A candle, which pious hands had placed there, was casting its light on a newly made cross beside the road; and Sinhô Badaró reflected that, if they were to illuminate like this all the crosses that would be raised there from now on, the highways of the land of cacao would be brighter even than the streets of Ilhéos. He felt sad about everything. “This is no time for dancing, my lass, but it is not my fault. No, it isn’t.”

  2

  The fracases that began that night were not to stop until the forest of Sequeiro Grande had been transformed into cacao groves. The people of the region from Palestina to Ihéos, and even those of Itapira, were later to reckon time with reference to this struggle.

  “That happened before the fracases of Sequeiro Grande.”

  “That was after the struggle for Sequeiro Grande had ended.”

  It was the last great struggle in connection with the conquest of the land, and the most ferocious of them all. For this reason it has remained a living reality down the years, the stories concerning it passing from mouth to mouth, from father to son, from the old men to the young. And at the fairs in the towns and cities blind musicians sing of these gun-frays which once upon a time drenched with blood the black land of cacao:

  It was a sorcerers’ curse,

  On a night when witches rode. . . .

  For the blind are the poets and chroniclers of this country. They it is who, strumming on their guitars, keep alive with their wheedling voices the traditions of the region. And the crowd at the fairs—men come to sell their flour, their millet, their bananas, and their oranges, and those who have come to buy—all gather around these blind bards to listen to the stories of the time when cacao was in its infancy and the century likewise was young. They will toss small coins into the cups at the beggars’ feet as the guitar-strings moan and a quavering voice sings of those long-past fatal affrays of Sequeiro Grande:

  Never was seen so much shooting,

  So many dead in the street. . . .

  Men will squat on the ground, a smile on their faces, while others lean on their staffs to listen attentively to the blind man’s tale. The verses are accompanied by the music of the guitar; and as the song goes on, there arise before these men of the present the men of another day, who cleared the jungle and felled the forest as they killed and died and planted cacao. Many who took part in the clashes of Sequeiro Grande are living still, and some of them figure in the verses that the blind men sing; but the hearers never think of associating the planters of today with the conquistadores of yesterday. It is as if the latter were beings of another world, so greatly have times changed. Where before was the forest, locked in the mystery of its century-old trunks, today stand open cacao groves with their fruit the colour of gold. The blind men go on singing, and their stories are terrifying ones:

  I am going to tell you a tale

  Will make your blood run cold. . . .

  A tale to make your blood run cold—the tale of the forest of Sequeiro Grande. On the very night that the brothers Merenda and Horacio’s three cabras attacked Sinhô Badaró on the side-road, that same night Juca set out at the head of a dozen men and committed a series of outrages in the neighbourhood. They began by slaying the two Merenda brothers in the sight of their mother, so it was said, as an object-lesson. Then they went on to Firmo’s grove, where they set fire to his manihot plantation; if they did not kill Firmo himself, it was because he happened to be in Tabocas.

  “That’s twice he’s got away,” said Juca. “He won’t get away the third time.”

  After that they proceeded to Braz’s place; but here there was a fight, for Braz and his men put up a resistance and Juca was compelled to retire, leaving one of his lads behind, while it was not known how many had fallen on the other side. One thing was certain: it was Antonio Victor who had brought the man down, for Juca had seen the fellow tumble. Antonio asserted that he had got another one, but they were not sure of this.

  A score of years later the blind singers visiting the fairs in the new towns of Pirangy and Guaracy, which had sprung up on the site of the forest of Sequeiro Grande, would narrate the details of the feud:

  It was a pity, it was a shame,

  So many the folks that died;

  Horacio’s men and the Badarós, too,

  On the ground lay side by side.

  Oh, it was enough to break your heart,

  All the killing that was done,

  And all the folks that lost their lives

  Each day from sun to sun.

  The men of the old days, it appeared, had gone around drumming up those jagunços who were known for the sureness of their firing-aim and whose courage had been tested. It was said that Horacio had sent into the backlands for famous “bad men,” and that the Badarós were unstinting of money when it came to paying a rifleman who was a dead shot. The nights were filled with fear, with mystery, and with surprises. Whatever road one might take, however long and roundabout, was not a safe one for travellers. Even those who had nothing whatsoever to do with the forest of Sequeiro Grande, with Horacio or with the Badarós, did not dare to venture along those highways of the cacao country without being accompanied by at least one cabra, one professional killer. The hardware merchants, who also dealt in weapons, grew rich in those days. All of them, that is to say, except Azevedo in Tabocas, who bankrupted himself furnishing repeating-rifles to the Badarós. If he had been able to save anything out of the ruins of his business, it was owing to his political dexterity. Later he kept a small shop in Ilhéos, and he, too, in his poverty-stricken old age, would tell stories of the same sort to the young students of the city.

  They threw away scythe and ax,

  Slung the rifle over their backs. . . .

  The weapon-dealer, he got rich,

  For they bought guns by the stacks,

  Indeed, I think, when all is told,

  Well-nigh a million must have been sold.

  So sang the blind beggars a score of years afterwards, as they told of the deeds and courage of the Badarós, of Sinhô and of Juca:

  Sinhô was a mighty fellow;

  Leader of the Badarós was he. . . .

  One time he finished off five men,

  All alone, so they tell me.

  And Juca, he was also brave;

  His courage was known to all;

  He was not afraid of any man,

  Either great or small.

  But they also sang of the courage of Horacio and his followers, and especially of Braz, the bravest of them all, who, though three times wounded, kept on fighting and killed two men:

  Braz, by name Brasilino

  José dos Santos, in full,

  Even as he lay dying.

  On the ground, the trigger did pull;

  For of fighting he’d not had his fill,

  And though wounded, he knew how to kill!

  They also gave a picture of Horacio on his plantation, giving orders to his men and sending them out along the roads that surrounded the forest of Sequeiro Grande:

  Horacio gave the orders,

  For he was the master there,

  And his cabras rode down the highway,

  Bringing death with them everywhere. . . .

  But the popular ballads inspired by the struggle of Sequeiro Grande not only etched in the figures and pictured the exploits of the protagonists; they also touched on the troubled lives that people in those days led. For instance:

  A married woman did not exist,

  “Unless in Bahia it be.” . . .

  For down this way they woul
d insist:

  “One married woman like any other

  —Even though she be a grandmother—

  Tomorrow’s widow is she.”

  The men at the fairs as they listened to all this, a score of years later, in towns that had been reared upon the site where the forest of Sequeiro Grande once had stood, would give vent to exclamations of amazement, laugh heartily, and comment on the narrative in short, sharp sentences. Thanks to the blind man’s voice, that entire year and a half of struggle had passed before them, with men slaying, dying, and fertilizing the earth with their blood. And when the blind beggar had ended his song:

  And now I have truly told you a tale

  To make your blood run cold!

  they would toss a few more coins into his cup and go off muttering to themselves: “It was sorcery, that is what it was.” For that was what the ballad said, and that was what the men of today said as well. It was sorcery, on a night when witches rode. The curse of black Jeremias had been laid upon the land in those days, being carried from plantation to plantation by the voice of Negro Damião, a lean and filthy figure of a man, a harmless half-wit who wandered, weeping and wailing, down the highways and the by-ways of the cacao country.

  3

  The excited gossip over the attempt on Sinhô Badaró’s life, from ambush, and the death of the Merenda brothers had not yet died down when Ilhéos was stirred by the incident in the café between Lawyer Virgilio and Juca Badaró. For the matter of that, events this year and a half followed one another with such rapidity that Dona Yayá Moura, the old maid who took care of one altar in the Church of St. Sebastian, was led to complain to her friend Dona Lenita Silva, who had charge of the opposite one.