Barren Lives

by Graciliano Ramos

  Infância (“Childhood”), in its poetic presentation of distant figures and events, preserves something of the atmosphere of fiction. Ramos in a sense was still writing from a viewpoint external to himself—that of the boy he had been half a century earlier, a boy who had left a few traces of his existence in Anguish and Barren Lives. The distinguished critic Álvaro Lins holds “Childhood” to be the best-written of all Ramos’ works, and indeed it is one of great distinction and charm. It possesses full literary autonomy; while of much interest for the light it throws on the man and his fictional compositions, it can be read and enjoyed for itself alone, as a story or collection of stories.

  The “Prison Memoirs,” on the other hand, constitute a spiritual diary of a period much nearer at hand, which had left an indelible impression on Ramos’ mind. One cannot but wonder at the wealth of its recorded detail, even if, as the author admits, it may not be accurate in all particulars, for it is in its entirety a reconstruction from memory. (Ramos took extended notes during the first part of his imprisonment, but these were later lost.) Highly uneven—pedestrian passages being interspersed with pages of great power—the “Memoirs” would undoubtedly have benefited from tightening and revision had not death overtaken the author as he was approaching the end of his chronicle.

  Ramos once wrote that in his view the principal deficiency from which Brazilian fiction of his day suffered was “lack of careful observation of the facts that are to enter into the composition of the work of art,” adding that, “in an undertaking so complex as the novel, ignorance of those facts is detrimental to characterization and results in a lack of verisimilitude in the narrative.” He himself was constant in writing only of that with which he had firsthand acquaintance and a feeling of intimacy. In an interview given a year before his death he declared:

  I could never conceive an abstract novel, a work of escape literature. My novels are all concerned with the Northeast, because it was there that I spent my youth; it is what I really know and feel. I have lived in Rio for twenty years [sic], but I could never succeed in writing a novel about Rio, because I do not know the city.

  Ramos did not, however, feel any scruple about rearranging facts to suit artistic purpose. In São Bernardo, Paulo Honório describes the process which we may assume was Ramos’ own:

  This conversation, obviously, did not proceed exactly as I have set it down on paper. There were pauses, repetitions, misunderstandings, and contradictions, all quite natural when people speak without thinking of the record. I reproduce what I consider interesting. I suppressed a number of passages and altered others. . . . For example, when I dragged Costa Brito over to the clock, I told him what I thought of him in four or five indecent terms. This abuse, unnecessary since it neither added to nor detracted from the effect of the whiplashes I gave him, has gone by the board as you will note if you reread the scene of the attack. That scene, expurgated of obscenities, is described with relative sobriety.

  Sobriety is indeed one of the key characteristics of Ramos’ manner. It has been noted in the discussion of Barren Lives, for example, that the author avoids the more melodramatic aspects of life in the backlands and that in picturing the catastrophic effects of the drought he exercises great restraint. Even Luís da Silva’s murder of Julião Tavares, the most violent scene in all Ramos’ writing, admirable as a revelation of the workings of the narrator’s tortured mind, is related with great simplicity of terms.

  Ramos’ constant aim was to obtain maximum effect from minimum resources. What he has to say he says in relatively few words. Save for the “Prison Memoirs,” none of his works can be described as long. As novels, São Bernardo and Barren Lives are decidedly short. Ramos’ sentences too are for the most part brief; at times they seem almost curt. Descriptive adjectives and adverbs are held to a minimum: a sample six-page chapter of São Bernardo exhibits but two of the latter and two dozen of the former.

  Ramos was greatly concerned with what he considered acceptable standards of literary expression. Up to the third decade of the present century, Brazilian authors tended to take the usage of Portugal as their model, without regard for the transformations which time, geographical separation, and the introduction of new ethnic elements had of necessity wrought in Portuguese as spoken in Brazil. The Modernist movement of the 1920’s revolted against this practice of “speaking one language and writing another,” and advocated vernacular usage as the basis of literary style. The inevitable question, of course, was what level of usage was to be taken as standard. If turns of popular speech often brought savoriness and spontaneity to literature, excessive reliance on the model provided by the man in the street, or in the field, resulted in what Ramos characterized as “the intentional mistakes of certain citizens who systematically write things the wrong way.” Such writers, he continued, “are purists who have gone astray, seeking to create an artificial language of halting effect.” Recognizing, on the other hand, that an “overly correct Portuguese” was “altogether impossible in Brazil,” he sought to steer a middle course, avoiding both the stilted and the incorrect. He succeeded admirably. One might well apply to Ramos what he said of one of his contemporaries: “He expresses himself correctly and without floweriness; this gives his prose an air of naturalness which deceives the unwary reader. We do not perceive the artifice; we have the impression that the effect is altogether spontaneous, obtained without effort of any kind.”

  Álvaro Lins, for his part, describes Ramos’ style thus:

  Graciliano Ramos’ prose is modern by reason of its leanness, the vocabulary it employs, and the taste it exhibits in the use of words and syntactical constructions. It is classic in its correctness and in the tone of what one might term Biblical dignity that marks the sentences. Its distinction derives not from sensual beauty but from precision—from a capacity for transmitting sensations and impressions with a minimum of metaphors and images, simply through the skillful interplay of words.

  Both for the transparency of his writing and for the pessimistic view he takes of life, Ramos has been compared to the greatest of his Brazilian predecessors, Machado de Assis. The aristocratically disillusioned prose of the latter, most often manifested in ironic wit, contrasts with a more profoundly fatalistic attitude on the part of Ramos. It is well exemplified by the passage setting forth Fabiano’s feelings following his settling of accounts with the ranch owner:

  Couldn’t they see he was a man of flesh and blood? It was his duty to work for others, naturally. He knew his place. That was all right. He was born to this lot; it was nobody’s fault that it was a hard one. What could he do? Could he change fate? If anyone were to tell him it was possible to better one’s lot, he would be amazed. He had come into the world to break untamed horses, cure cattle ailments by prayer, and fix fences from winter to summer. It was fate. His father had lived like that, his grandfather too. . . . He accepted the situation; he did not ask for more. If only they gave him what was coming to him, it was all right. But they didn’t. He was a poor devil; like a dog, all he got was bones. Why then did rich people go and take part of the bones?

  Life is essentially unjust, and there is nothing anyone can do about it: this is Ramos’ view. Other writers of his generation, particularly those from his own Northeast, likewise saw the injustice; they, however, felt that something could and should be done about it. Several took an active part in left-wing politics, and in their works there breathes a conviction that sooner or later a new day must dawn for the disinherited of the earth. Not so Ramos. He admitted of changes in individual situations: a Paulo Honório could rise, a Luís Padilha could sink. There will always, however, be oppressed and oppressors. Toward both he took an equally cold, one might say clinical, attitude. Suffering he treats with dignity but without compassion.

  Though Ramos seems to have taken human pettiness and meanness for granted, human generosity caused him surprise. Gratuitous acts of kindness of which he was the object during prison days were a source of unresolved wonder to him. Is it c
oincidence that the work which followed upon that period of his existence was not the somber Anguish but Barren Lives, relatively speaking the most optimistic—or perhaps one should say least pessimistic—of his creations? Despite the natural disasters and human injustices which overtake them, Fabiano and his family breathe an elemental heroism; they bear witness to the unconquerable spirit that bids man carry on, whatever adversity he may be called to face.

  By reason of the keenness of his psychological insight, of his deep feeling for the vernacular, of his unfailing sense of proportion, of his skilled craftsmanship in construction, Ramos has been able to fashion from the simplest and most unpromising of materials works which stand among the most impressive creations of modern Brazilian literature. Commonplace incidents, related with that apparent artlessness which is one of the highest forms of art, acquire a depth of meaning far surpassing that of the spectacular shipwrecks to which the João Valérios of the literary world turn for effect. The backlander Fabiano, humble and inarticulate though he may be, takes on a stature and a dignity approaching that of figures of classic tragedy.

  “Less is more,” Mies van der Rohe has proclaimed. The power of Graciliano Ramos’ austere creations well betokens the truth of that dictum.

  RALPH EDWARD DIMMICK

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1. A New Home

  2. Fabiano

  3. Jail

  4. Vitória

  5. The Younger Boy

  6. The Older Boy

  7. Winter

  8. Feast Day

  9. The Dog

  10. Accounts

  11. The Policeman in Khaki

  12. The Birds

  13. Flight

  Barren Lives

  A New Home

  The jujube trees spread in two green stains across the reddish plain. The drought victims had been walking all day; they were tired and hungry. Generally they did not get very far, but after a long rest on the sands of the riverbed they had gone a good three leagues. For hours now they had been looking for some sign of shade. The foliage of the jujubes loomed in the distance, through the bare twigs of the sparse brush.

  Slowly they dragged themselves in that direction. Vitória carried the younger boy astride her hip and the tin trunk on top of her head. Fabiano stumbled along gloomily, a haversack slung by its strap across his chest, a drinking gourd hanging by a thong from his belt, and a flintlock resting on his shoulder. The older boy and the dog straggled along behind.

  The jujubes seemed to advance, then to retreat and disappear. The older boy sat down on the ground and began to cry.

  “Get going, you limb of Satan!” his father yelled at him.

  As the words had no effect, he hit the boy with the scabbard of his sheath knife. The lad kicked and drew back; then, suddenly quiet, he stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. Fabiano gave him a few more whacks and waited for him to get up. He did not, however. Fabiano, looking about, cursed softly in anger.

  The brushland stretched in every direction, its vaguely reddish hue broken only by white heaps of dry bones. Vultures flew in black circles over dying animals.

  “Get going, you little heathen!”

  The youngster did not so much as stir. Fabiano felt like killing him. His heart was heavy, and he wanted to blame his misfortune on someone. The drought seemed to him a necessary evil, and the child’s obstinacy exasperated him. The boy couldn’t help it if he was a hindrance, but he made going difficult and the herdsman had to get someplace or other, he didn’t know where.

  They had left the roads, full of thorns and stones, and for hours had been walking along the riverbed, whose dry, cracked mud scorched their feet.

  The idea of abandoning the boy in that desolate spot passed through the troubled mind of the backlander. He thought of the vultures and of the piles of dry bones, and scratched his dirty red beard in indecision, examining the surroundings. Vitória stuck out her lower lip in a vague indication of direction, and uttered some guttural sounds to the effect that they were not far now. Fabiano put his knife back in its sheath and stuck it in his belt. Squatting down, he took the boy by the wrist. But the child had drawn his legs up against his belly and was as cold as a corpse. Fabiano’s wrath now gave way to pity. He couldn’t leave the little fellow a prey to wild animals. He handed the flintlock over to Vitória, took his son on his back, and stood up, grasping the spindling arms that dangled limply over his breast. Vitória nodded approval of this arrangement and, uttering her guttural interjection anew, pointed toward the invisible jujubes.

  Thus they resumed their journey, dragging along more slowly, in great silence.

  Lacking her companion, the dog took the lead. Her back sagging, her ribs plainly visible, she trotted along panting, with her tongue hanging out. From time to time she stopped, waiting for her people, who had fallen behind.

  Only the day before there had been six of them, counting the parrot. Poor thing! It had met its end on the sand of the riverbed, where they had taken their rest beside a mudhole. With no sign of food in the vicinity, hunger had been too much for the drought-sufferers. The dog had eaten the head, feet, and bones of her friend and had no more recollection of the matter. Now, standing there waiting, she looked over the family belongings and was surprised not to see on top of the tin trunk the little cage in which the bird had struggled to keep a balance.

  Fabiano too missed it at times, but then he remembered: they had hunted in vain for roots to eat, the last of the manioc flour was gone, there was no sound of stray livestock to be heard in the brush.

  Vitória had been seated on the warm earth, her hands crossed on her bony knees, her thoughts occupied with confused recollections of bygone days—wedding celebrations, roundups, novenas. A harsh squawk roused her from her revery and brought her back to reality. Her eye fell upon the parrot, which was spreading its claws in a fit of ridiculous fury, and without further ado she decided to make a meal of it. She justified the act by telling herself the bird was quite useless—it didn’t even talk. That wasn’t its fault. The family was normally one of few words, and with the coming of disaster all had fallen silent, only the briefest of utterances passing their lips. The parrot hallooed at nonexistent cattle and barked like the dog.

  The dark spots of the jujube trees reappeared. Fabiano’s step grew lighter; he forgot hunger, weariness, and sores. His rope sandals were worn at the heel; the fiber thongs had made painful cracks between his toes; the skin of his heels, though hard as a hoof, had split and was bleeding.

  A bend in the road brought a fence corner into view, filling Fabiano with the hope of finding food. He felt like singing, but the only sounds he could bring forth were hoarse and rasping, and he stopped so as to save his breath.

  Leaving the riverbed, they walked along the fence, climbed a slope, and arrived at the jujubes. It was a long time since they had seen any shade.

  Vitória sought to make the children comfortable, covering them with rags. They had dropped to the ground like a pair of bundles. The older boy, who was now over his attack of dizziness, curled up on a heap of dry leaves, his head resting on a root. He alternately dozed and awakened. When he opened his eyes he made out vaguely a hill near by, a few stones, and an oxcart. The dog came and curled up beside him.

  They were in the yard of a deserted ranch. The corral was empty, as was the goat pen. The herdsman’s house was shut up. There was every indication of abandonment. Unquestionably the cattle had died and the people had moved away.

  Fabiano listened in vain for the sound of a cowbell. He went up to the house, knocked, and then tried to force the door, which resisted his efforts. Crossing a garden plot in which only dead plants were to be seen, he rounded the ramshackle dwelling and came to the back yard, where he found an empty clay pit, a grove of withered catingueira trees, a turk’s-head cactus, and the extension of the corral fence. He climbed up on the corner post and examined the brushland, with its heaps of bones and black clouds of vultures.


  Getting down again, he tried the kitchen door without success. He turned around in discouragement and stood for a moment under the shed, considering the idea of lodging the family there. But when he came back to the jujubes he found the boys asleep and didn’t want to wake them. He went to look for kindling, bringing from the goat pen a whole armload, half-eaten by termites. Pulling up some roots, he prepared to make a fire.

  At this point the dog pricked up her ears and wrinkled her nose. She had caught the smell of cavies. Sniffing for a moment, she located them on the nearby hill and set off at a run.

  Fabiano, gazing in the direction she had taken, gave a start: a shadow was passing over the hill! He touched his wife’s arm and pointed to the sky. The two of them stood for some time staring into the light of the sun. Then, wiping away the tears that had come to their eyes, they went and squatted by the children, sighing. There they remained crouching, dreading lest the cloud be dissipated by the fearful blue—that dazzling blue that drove people mad.

  They had seen days come and go, followed by swiftly descending nights when the sky seemed to drop down, its indigo tinged only by the ruddy glow of sunset.

  Infinitely small and lost in the burning desert, the two clutched at one another, making a common lot of their fears and misfortunes. Fabiano’s heart beat beside that of Vitória; a weary embrace united the rags that covered them. Resisting their moment of weakness they drew apart, ashamed, but without the courage to confront the harsh light again, fearing to lose the hope they nourished.

  They were aroused from the lethargy into which they were falling by the dog, who came with a cavy in her jaws. Everyone arose with a shout. The older boy rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Vitória kissed the dog’s muzzle and, finding it covered with blood, licked it, profiting from her demonstration of affection.

  As game the cavy was poor stuff, but it would serve to prolong life. And Fabiano wanted to live. He looked resolutely at the sky. The cloud had grown: it now covered the whole hill. Fabiano’s step took on assurance; he forgot the cracks in his toes and heels.