“Well, that is one way of looking at it, perhaps, mestre. It is not a competition. But the men of Saõ Martinho have always been well represented.” Nevertheless, there was a slight, but undeniable, hint of a decidedly secular competitive pride in the handsome young ranch hand’s voice.
“I see. And this chalk board?”
“We borrow it from the school, here in town, senhor. The men who wish to be flogged write their names on it. We go in order. That way, we can tell how long it will be before it is our turn, and we need not stand around waiting in a long line, as we used to do.” Obviously proud of this innovation, Oranjinho went on to explain that a certain informal protocol was followed. It was the custom to allow the married men to go first, in general, so they could get the ordeal over with and return to their families. The unmarried men, who presumably had fewer familial obligations, tended to go next. And the men representing the fazenda of Saõ Martinho, most of whom were bachelors, traditionally wrote their names closer to the end of the list.
“I believe, mestre, that custom began because it was assumed that the good brothers would start to get tired toward the end of the ritual,” Oranjinho joked. “And not whip as hard as they do while they are still fresh. But, in my experience, that has not been the case. The brothers work hard in the fields, growing their own food. They are physically very strong.”
“Well, we must respect tradition,” Sebastien said. He followed the example of Oranjinho and some of the other men from the fazenda, by writing his name on the lower right-hand side of the blackboard, leaving plenty of room free for others to insert their names above.
He’d succeeded in giving Oranjinho a jolt. “You will submit, mestre?” the youth asked.
“Why not? It is to uphold the honor of the fazenda, as you have said. And whose responsibility is that, if not mine?”
Sebastien then turned, to find Estevao standing beside him. He was licking what looked like a white candy apple on a stick, purchased from one of the food vendors. As Estevao turned the stick to attack a different spot on the treat, Sebastien saw that it was a candy skull, with bared teeth and staring eyes formed by smaller pieces of candy set in the sockets, which were painted with bright red food color to suggest dripping blood.
“Good God, Estevao,” Sebastien blurted out. “That thing you are eating is positively disgusting.”
“It’s good, senhor,” Estevao protested. “You must have one.”
“I think I’ll pass…although I may try some of those dumplings which that man over there is frying. I can smell them from here, and it’s driving me crazy, even after that wonderful meal we just had, back home.”
After eating his dumplings, Sebastien was approached by a middle-aged gentleman, who introduced himself. He was the mayor of Guarás, and he was accompanied by his wife and children. Sebastien soon found himself and the mayor deep in conversation about the town’s school system. He ended up with a standing invitation to visit the mayor at his home.
Some people were inspecting the list of names scrawled on the chalk board, and were drawing attention to the presence of the name Sebastien Leon, among the others.
“I cannot recall a previous mestre of Saõ Martinho participating in the flagellations,” the mayor remarked.
“Well, then I will be the first,” Sebastien replied, affecting a nonchalance he was in fact far from feeling. After all, he was tempted to tell the mayor, I’ve been practicing!
The evening sun had flattened to an orange disc, and like a nickel deposited in the slot of some invisible celestial vending machine, it slid smoothly and swiftly behind the white cumulous clouds floating above the western horizon. Intense color seemed to fill the air. Purple mist rose from the red-tiled roofs of the buildings around the square and the houses in the streets beyond. The great heat of the day was finally passing.
Sebastien saw that the flower lady had done such a brisk business that her stock was almost sold out. He bought one of her remaining crosses, a simple arrangement of red and white geraniums, bound together with greenery and tied with a purple ribbon. He took it into the cemetery.
Tio Gil’s gravestone was not neglected. Senhora Erendira’s pot, with the flowering plant in it, was set on it, surrounded by several bunches of fresh flowers. The recently planted rose bush was already putting out new green growth, with buds and open blooms, which glowed in the light from the setting sun. Sebastien propped the floral cross against the side of the pot.
He realized that Cristiano had followed him and was now standing a step behind him, silently praying. When he had finished, Cristiano crossed himself and kissed his thumb.
“Are you sad, primo?” Cristiano asked.
“Not really sad, Cristiano, oddly enough,” Sebastien replied. “Just thoughtful, perhaps.”
“This is a time of the year for reflection and meditation.”
“Yes.”
“I love you, primo.”
“I love you, too.”
“Let us meditate upon that, instead of losing ourselves in sorrow. Come. Let us join the others.”
They returned to the square, just in time to witness its transformation.
Suddenly, the bell in the church’s stubby little bell tower began tolling, in measured, uniformly spaced strokes. It was obviously not a large bell—instead of a deep, resounding boom, it rang out in clear, high-pitched, penetrating peals.
Instantly, the entire mood in the square and the streets that radiated from it changed. People in the crowd paused in what they were doing to cross themselves and to pray, some silently, others audibly. The vendors began to close up their stalls—some of them hastily concluding a final transaction before shutting down. The musicians sputtered to a halt, putting their instruments down. The dancers ceased their gyrations, separated, and stood immobile. Within a minute or two, an expectant silence prevailed, broken only by the continued tolling of the bell and the murmured prayers.
In one of the streets, the crowd began to move back to either side, clearing a way in the middle. Heads turned, expectantly, in the direction away from the square, and the men began to doff their hats. Some of the men and women fell to their knees in prayer.
“What is it?” Sebastien asked Cristiano, in an undertone.
“The holy brothers from the monastery,” his cousin replied, also in a whisper. “The procession. They have walked here all the way from the monastery, across the fields. You will see them come last, at the end of the procession. They have been met on the outskirts of the town by the priests from the church, by some members of other religious orders, and by some of the men from the town. You will see the Holy Bier carried on the men’s shoulders first, and the image of the Virgin.”
The townspeople’s holiday animation was replaced by a sense of intense suspense. Their faces were rapt with concentration, and their nostrils were wide open as though to breathe in the first faint odor of holiness. Sebastien, too, detected the first drifting whiffs of the exotic aroma. It grew in intensity as it floated above the scent of the jasmine flowers and the roses, absorbing their fragrance and subduing it. The odor of holiness was strong. Sebastien now saw how it ascended in a thin spiral of smoke from the swinging censer carried by the thurifer, one of four white-robed priests who walked ahead of the others in the procession, followed by two young altar boys. The incense rose only a little, sluggishly, in this dense night air, the dampness of which pressed down upon the sweet, pungent smoke, and spread it in low and floating clouds among the faces of the people.
The townspeople, eager to see, moved forward and pressed more closely together in a mass of slowly moving bodies. They sucked into their lungs the incense’s aroma and strained forward to catch sight of the Holy Bier as it approached. Between the measured strokes of the bell, only the faint sound of treading feet and rustling garments now filled the street, occasionally varied by a child crying out, frightened by the strange activity.
The crowd could now see the black-draped Bier with its purple canopy, carried on the
shoulders of the bareheaded, black-and-white-robed religious brothers. It was followed by men in ordinary attire, carrying, also shoulder-high, a wooden statue of the Virgin, painted and dressed like a large doll, standing erect on a second platform. The observers could see, too, a man come forward and place a stool securely in the street. On this a young girl stood, wearing a white dress with her head veiled in a long, dangling purple scarf. Her face was pale, except for her artificially crimsoned lips and the violet eye shadow that enhanced her eyes, making them seem larger. She stood precariously but fearlessly upon the stool, and unfolded for all to see her sacred relic, the impression of The Visage upon a cloth. It was stamped in sharp, hard outlines and bold color. The girl opened her crimson lips, and in a small, high childish voice she told how she, Veronica, had received the precious image. The townspeople listened intently. It was obvious that being chosen to deliver this little speech was a great local honor. Her recitation, when it was completed, was acknowledged by general applause.
She descended, and the man, presumably her father, took her by the hand, picked up the stool in his other hand, and led her to join the other onlookers. One of the priests delivered a long prayer in rapid-fire Latin. The wooden figure in its blue robes, still carried high upon the now-motionless men’s shoulders, stared with an unchanging gaze. The crowd in front observed all of this, as though fascinated. The onlookers behind, who could not see so clearly, pressed forward, jostling the others, but not in an aggressive way. The incense was now strong in everyone’s nostrils, and Sebastien fought back a sudden impulse in sneeze. The mango leaves on the trees which bordered the little square were still, not rustling in the hot air as they usually did when stirred by the faintest breeze.
The night air felt increasingly heavy as it sank down upon the flat land.
The lights of the town appeared one by one, spotting the darkness with tiny areas of shining brightness. The Southern Cross hung in the sky, to remind the foreigner, if necessary, that he was south of the equator—just as the incense drifting in the streets reminded him that he was in a Roman Catholic country.
As the prayers droned on, monotonously, Sebastien glanced upward to do some quick stargazing. He saw, surrounding the Cross, other constellations, none of which he recognized.
Not knowing quite what to expect, Sebastien was at somewhat of a disadvantage, and was momentarily taken aback by what he now saw. The monks of Padre Valentin’s flagellant order were indeed approaching at the end of the procession, along the street, walking slowly in pairs. There were ten of them, and they were all identically attired—not in the kind of white robe which Padre Valentin had worn on his visit to the fazenda, but in black robes with oversized rosaries slung around their waists and hips like belts, and tall conical black hoods completely covering their heads. The hoods had tiny slits in them for the eyes and mouths. For Sebastien, these enveloping robes and pointed mask-like hoods inevitably had sinister implications—they reminded him of images of the Ku Klux Klan, or the Spanish Inquisition. In a further, disquieting touch, the first four monks in the procession all carried identical whips—cat o’ nine tails, with thick braided handles and dangling strips of leather. The six figures who brought up the rear bore, on their shoulders, a massive cross, carpentered from two heavy beams of raw wood expertly joined together. Oranjinho, Sebastien couldn’t help thinking, must not have been exaggerating when he’d commented on the brothers’ physical strength. Just how far cross-country had they hauled that huge crucifix?
He scrutinized each of the sinister hooded faces, trying to determine which of them was Padre Valentin’s, but the hoods imposed a uniformity upon the brothers, nullifying their individual identities.
As the procession entered the square, filling its center, Sebastien wasn’t surprised when Cristiano, whom he already knew to be a take-charge kind of a guy, stepped forward, followed by Uver and Estevao, and two of the men from the town, to relieve the monks of their burden. Sebastien went to assist them, and together they carried the cross, which was indeed very heavy, to the freshly-dug post hole. Carefully, they raised it to a vertical position and set it in place in the hole. The scraps of wood, Sebastien now saw, were pounded into the ground at the base of the cross, at angles, to help stabilize it. When these braces were adjusted to the men’s satisfaction, one of them secured them to the base by hammering in a few nails.
Sebastien now saw that the cross had two wrought-iron rings screwed into its crosspiece, obviously to secure a man’s wrists. The chalk board was now filled with names—a total of thirty-two, he counted.
The church bell abruptly ceased tolling. The three priests and the two altar boys who had headed the procession entered the church. The thurifer followed them, pausing only to approach the cross and wave the censer about it, momentarily enveloping it in a dense cloud of the pungent incense, which slowly dissipated. The monks knelt and prayed in unison, their voices sounding almost harsh in the charged silence, as the crowd of onlookers watched them and listened to them, with bowed heads.
Then one of the monks who was armed with a cat o’ nine tails withdrew it from his rosary belt and held it out in front of him, as though in mute invitation.
A man detached himself from the crowd, went to the black board, picked up a piece of chalk from its tray, and drew a line through the first name on the list—his name. He removed his shirt and handed it to one of his friends.
Thanks to his nocturnal excursion to the cairn, Sebastien knew what to expect. The doffing of one’s shirt, the crossing of oneself, the binding of one’s wrists to the rings set in the cross with lengths of rope, the twelve deliberately spaced and carefully aimed lashes, the cutting of the bonds to release the—well, they could hardly be described as the victims, given the consensual nature of the activity. They were the participants, Sebastien decided…the celebrants, or the devotees.
He watched as five men were flogged, one after another. As the sixth was bound to the cross, a second monk took over from the first, whose arm was presumably getting tired—although it had brandished the whip with a steady, machinelike precision.
Some of the men, Sebastien noticed, had the foresight to have brought along some object to insert in their mouths and bite on while they were whipped. These aids were usually no more than a piece of cloth, folded or rolled up, but one man bit into a short length of wooden dowel, and another made use of a hard rubber object that rather resembled a dog’s chew toy. And for all Sebastien knew, that could be exactly what it was—purchased especially for this occasion, he hoped, not borrowed from the family pet!
Sebastien also discovered that, while most of the men made a point of enduring the ordeal with a show of stoic taciturnity, such silence was by no means mandatory. Some men uttered prayers. Others allowed themselves the sporadic loud gasp or outcry, sometimes calling upon Jesus, or the Virgin. One strapping youth, evidently a local boy, who only a few minutes before had been one of the carefree dancers in the square, jerked his body violently and let out a high-pitched shriek each time the lash touched him. No one reacted as though his behavior was anything out of the ordinary.
The crowd of observers stood or knelt in silence, except for the occasional murmured prayer. There was enough lingering norte-americano puritanism left in Sebastien to make him uncomfortable at the sight of young children being exposed to this spectacle. One little boy, already frightened by the presence of the sinister-looking hooded monks, burst into tears when his father was bound to the cross and whipped. His mother comforted him, of course, and so, immediately upon his release, did his father, who hugged the boy and laughed, teasing him, to show him that no harm had been done.
It’s like an assembly line, Sebastien thought—perhaps a bit irreverently. It would go a lot faster if they had a second cross set up…or, better yet, four crosses, one for each monk. Four floggers, no waiting! He suppressed a guilty, nervous giggle.
As the names were crossed out one by one, Sebastien recognized all of those toward the end of the list. They
were all men from the fazenda, including, of course, himself. The men from Saõ Martinho, seeing that their turns would soon come up, now formed a little queue, many of them already stripped to the waist. Estevao and Cristiano brought up the rear. With smiles and mute gestures, they invited Sebastien to get into the line ahead of them.
Sebastien stood behind Joaquin and watched as, one by one, their friends endured the ordeal—Uver, followed by the seemingly inseparable trio of Stênio, Edu, and Reymundo, then Vicinius, then Oranjinho…
When it was Joaquin’s turn, he stripped off his shirt, then took an eyeglass case from his trouser pocket and carefully deposited his glasses inside it. “Hold these for me, will you?” he asked Sebastien in a whisper.
“Of course.” Sebastien took the shirt and case from Joaquin and watched as the fazenda’s manager took his lashes with a display of utter calm.
With such an example set for him, Sebastien was determined to emulate it, as he handed Joaquin back his things, peeled off his own shirt, and went to take his place. The sight of the new mestre of the fazenda of Saõ Martinho having his wrists bound to the iron rings in the cross created a slight stir—a flurry of whispered comments blended with the prayers. Now that Sebastien knew what to expect, the first hot sting of the lash on his flesh made him suck in his breath, but he took it. He forced himself to concentrate, to try to regulate his breathing, in anticipation of the next blow. It came, burning into his back. The multiple leather strips of the cat impacted upon a broader area of the back than the bullwhip had done. Sebastien couldn’t decide whether this was a plus, or a minus. The blows seemed less intense at first, but the flesh was heated more efficiently.
Damn it, these monks know what they’re doing! he grudgingly conceded, allowing his thoughts to wander. But you can’t tell me they aren’t enjoying this! They’re probably thinking, “Take that, you sinners! You know you deserve it!”
As lash followed lash and the tingling heat spread across his shoulders and back, he remembered to keep count. He was up to nine before the cumulative effect of the flogging forced him to grit his teeth and tug uselessly at his wrist restraints, in an effort to relieve some of the growing discomfort. He could hear his own loud breathing, panting like a dog as he inhaled, snorting through his nostrils every time he exhaled. Ten…eleven…twelve. It was over. He’d done it. He’d taken his punishment, like the others.
Brazilian Cattle Baron (Siren Publishing Ménage and More ManLove) Page 43
