flourishes with a view to hiding the final climax and heightening the
effect, the old man would become highly interested and during the
artful pauses would ask for explanations or continuation:
“And the rascally Englishman?... And what happened next?... Did Mr.
John call for help?”
Although the fatal peal of laughter was long in coming, the future
collector did not despair, pinning his faith on the fable of the
pitcher that went so often to the well that it finally broke.
The calculation was well made. Psychology, as well as Lent, was on his
side.
One day, Carnival having passed, the Major gathered his friends about
an enormous stuffed fish, a present from the clerk.
Carnival sport had enlivened the hearts of the guests as well as of the
host who on that day was pleased with himself and the whole world, as
though he had seen the blue-bird.
When the fish was brought in, the Major’s eyes sparkled; it was
well worth all the bottled aperitives and reflected in all faces an
epicurean tenderness. Fine fish was the Major’s delight, especially
when cooked by Gertrude. And for that dinner Gertrude had excelled in a
seasoning that transcended all culinary art and soared to the height of
the most exquisite poetry. What fish! Vatel could have signed it with
the pen of impotence dipped in the ink of envy, said the clerk, well up
as a reader of Brillat-Savarin and other authorities on good things to
eat.
Between swallows of rich wine the fish was eaten with religious rites.
No one dared break the silence of that bromatological beatitude.
Pontes foresaw the opportune moment to play his game. He had brought
full-cocked a case of an Englishman, his wife and two bearded friars,
an anecdote built from the best grey cells of his brain, rendered
ever more perfect through long nights of insomnia. It had been kept
in ambush for days awaiting the moment in which everything would
contribute towards the greatest possible effect.
It was the last hope of the villain, his last cartridge. If it failed
to go off he would decidedly blow out his brains. He saw that it was
impossible to manipulate a more ingenious torpedo. Should the aneurism
resist the shock, then the aneurism was a bluff, the great artery a
fiction, Chernovitz mere twaddle, medical science worthless and Dr.
Ioduret an ass and he, Pontes, the dullest, most insipid creature under
the sun, therefore unworthy to live.
Pontes meditated thus, alluring the poor victim with the eyes of
psychology when the Major met him halfway and winked his left eye at
him.
“The time has come,” thought the scoundrel and in the most natural way
he took up the little bottle of sauce as though casually and began to
read the label:
“Perrins, Lea & Perrins. I wonder if this might be a relation of that
Lord Perrins, who baffled the two bearded friars?”
Inebriated by the seductions of the fish the Major’s eyes lit up
coveteously, greedy for a spicy tale:
“Two bearded friars and a Lord! The story must be A-1! Fire away,
Chipmunk.”
And chewing mechanically he became absorbed in the fatal story.
The anecdote ran on insidiously in a natural strain, told with a
master’s art, firm and sure, with strategic progression, showing real
genius, until it nearly reached the climax. Around about this point the
entanglement so held the attention of the poor old man that he remained
motionless, with lips parted and an olive, stuck on his fork in mid
air. A half smile,--a detained smile, the spark of laughter which is
the preparation for a peal of laughter, lit up his face.
Pontes hesitated. He foresaw the break of the artery. Conscience
cramped his tongue, but only for an instant. Pontes let conscience
quiet down again and pulled the trigger.
For the first time in his life Major Antonio Pereira da Silva Bentes
broke into a hearty peal of laughter; frank, resounding,--which could
be heard all down the street; a peal of laughter equal to that of
Teufelsdröckh before John Paul Richter. The first and the last, because
in the midst of it his astonished guests saw him fall face-downwards
over his plate, while at the same time a gush of blood reddened the
table-cloth.
The assassin rose hallucinated and making the most of the confusion,
slipped out onto the street, a modern Cain. He hid himself at home,
locked in his room, his teeth chattering the night through, in a cold
sweat. The least noise filled him with terror: was it the Police?
Weeks later he began to get over that soul-fright which everyone
attributed to sorrow over the death of his friend. Notwithstanding, he
had ever before his eyes the same sight: the old man fallen over his
plate, spurting blood while the echo of his last peal of laughter still
rang in the air.
While in this deplorable condition, Pontes received a letter from the
relative in Rio. Among other things the holder of the trump card wrote:
“Since you did not advise me in time, as per our agreement, I learned
of Bentes death only through the newspapers; I looked up the Minister
but it was too late, the appointment of his successor had already been
signed. Your frivolousness has lost you the best chance of your life.
Remember this for your future guidance: _tarde venientibus ossa_,
and be smarter in the future.”
A month later they found him hanging from a beam in his room with his
tongue lolling, his body rigid.
He had hung himself by a leg of his drawers.
When the news got about town everyone found it amusing. The Portuguese
grocer commented thus to the cashiers:
“What a fellow! Even on his dying day he cracks a joke! Hung himself by
a drawers leg! Only Pontes would remember to do that.”
And they repeated in chorus a series of “Ha! has!!” ... the only
epitaph given him by man.
THE PLANTATION BUYER
No worse farm existed than that of Espigão. It had already ruined three
owners, which made superstitious people say: “The thing’s a white
elephant!” The last holder, a certain David Moreira de Souza, acquired
it at auction, convinced that it was a great bargain; but there he was,
too, head over ears in debt, scratching his head disconsolately....
The coffee plantations stripped every other year, lashed by hail or
blackened by frost, never yielded enough of a crop to fill a deposit.
The overgrown pastures were full of white-ant heaps intertwined with
choking weeds, teeming with ticks; any ox turned loose there soon
became thin, with its ribs showing, full of parasites, pitifully sorry
and sore.
The underbrush that had taken the place of the native forest, revealed
by the indiscreet presence of the brambles, the poorest kind of dry
soil. On such soil the manioc shyly put forth little knotted branches;
the large species of sugar-cane took on the aspect of the most slender
kind and these in turn became similar to little bamboos that passed
through the grinding cylinders untouched.
The horses were full of lice. The pigs that escaped the plague never
got beyond the Pharaonic thinness of Egyptian cows.
On every side the cutting-ant reigned supreme, day and night busily
mowing down the grass of the pastures, so that in October the sky would
be darkened by clouds of winged ants, male and female, frolicking about
in their love-making.
Unopened roads, fallen fences, laborer’s dwellings full of leaks,
with shaky roofs, foretelling ugly ruins. Even in the manor-house,
everything indicated approaching ruin; plastering falling, floors
worm-eaten; paneless windows; rickety furniture; bulging walls ... was
there anything whole to be found there?
Within this tumble-down setting, the planter, grown old under the
burden of long disillusionment, and besides, gnawed by the voracious
interest, without hope and without remedy, a hundred times a day
scratched the cow-lick of hair on his grey head.
His wife, poor Dona Izaura, having lost her autumnal strength, gathered
upon her face all the freckles and crows-feet invented by the years,
hand in hand with a hard-working life.
Zico the eldest child had turned out a good-for-nothing, fond of rising
at ten, plastering his hair until eleven and spending the rest of his
time in unlucky flirtations.
Aside from this vagabond, there was Zilda, then about seventeen, a
pretty girl, but more sentimental than was reasonable and good for her
parents’ peace of mind. The girl spent her time reading love stories
and building castles in Spain....
There was only one way out of such a situation: sell the darned
_fazenda_, to be able to breathe free from mortgages. It was
difficult, however, at a time when coffee sold at five _mil réis_
the _arroba_;[5] it was hard to lay one’s hands on a fool of the
dimensions required. Attracted by clever advertisements, some buyers
found their way to Espigão, but turned up their noses, swearing at the
useless journey and making no offer.
“It would be dear as a gift!” they would murmur to themselves.
Moreira’s cow-lick, after repeated scratching, yielded a mystifying
plan: to place along the edge of the thickets and one or other openings
accessible to visitors, plants of good standard woods, transplanted
from the neighboring forests. The lunatic did so and even more: stuck
into a hollow a tree of _Pau d’aiho_, imported from São Paulo’s
rich red soil and fertilized the coffee plants on the edge of the path
just enough to conceal the poverty of the rest. Wherever the sun’s rays
disclosed more clearly the poorness of the soil, there the hallucinated
old man covered it over with rich sifted earth....
One day he received a letter from his business agent announcing a new
buyer. “Handle your man carefully,” he advised, “know how to work the
game and you have him. His name is Pedro Trancoso, very wealthy, very
young, very loquacious, and he wants a fazenda for pleasure. It all
depends upon tricking him with the ability of a cunning dealer.”
Moreira prepared himself for the task. In the first place he warned
the laborers to be on their guard, careful in what they should say.
Instructed by their master, the men answered to the queries of the
visitors with consummate cunning, so as to transform into marvels the
evils of the place.
Buyers are accustomed to interrogate unexpectedly, being suspicious
of the information given by the proprietors. Therefore, if
this happened--and it always happened, because Moreira was the
personification of the contriver of chance situations,--there occurred
dialogues such as these:
“Is there much frost about here?”
“Very little, and that only in bad years.”
“Do beans grow well here?”
“Holy Mother! This very year I planted five measures and harvested
fifty _alqueires_. And what beans!”
“Do the cattle have ticks?”
“Why, no! only one or another here and there. For raising, none better.
No weeds or wild beans. The trouble is, the master has no strength. If
he had the means this would become a fine fazenda!”
Having warned the informants, that night the preparation for receiving
their guest was discussed, all happy with the renewal of their lost
hopes.
“I bet that this time the thing goes!” said the vagabond son and
declared that for his part he needed three _contos_ to set himself
up in business.
“What kind of business?” asked the father astonished.
“A grocery store at Volta Redonda....”
“At Volta Redonda! I was already surprised at a sensible idea in this
crazy head. So as to sell on credit to Tudinha’s people?”
The lad, though he didn’t blush, kept silent; he had reason to do so.
The wife wanted a house in town; for a long while she had her eye on a
small dwelling on a certain street, a cheap little house suitable for a
family of moderate means.
Zilda a piano ... and crates and crates of love stories....
They slept happily that night and on the following day they sent early
to the village for dainties to offer to their guest--butter, cheese and
biscuits. There was some hesitation over the butter.
“That’s not worth while!” objected the wife. “That will cost three
_mil réis_. Far better buy me with that money a piece of unbleached
cotton that I am needing so much.”
“It is necessary, my dear! Sometimes a trifle helps to get around a man
and facilitates the closing up of business. Butter is grease and grease
makes things slide!”
The butter won.
While she awaited the arrival of the ingredients, Dona Izaura fell to
sweeping and cleaning the house and arranging the guest’s room; killed
the least thin of the cockerels and a young lame sucking pig; seasoned
the dough for the pasties and was rolling it out when....
“There he comes!” shouted Moreira from the window where he had
posted himself since early morning, nervously scanning the high road
with an old field glass; without leaving his post of observation he
transmitted the details as he saw them to his more than busy wife.
“He is young ... well dressed ... Panama hat ... looks like Chico
Canhambora....”
At last the man arrived; dismounted; presented his card: Pedro Trancoso
de Carvalhaes Fagundes. A finer young fellow and of pleasanter speech
had never landed at Espigão.
He began relating all sorts of things with the ease of a man who is as
much at home in the world as in his own house in pyjamas--the journey,
incidents connected with it; a marmosette he had seen hanging from a
branch.
As soon as they had entered the waiting room Zico glued his ear to the
keyhole, from there whispering to the women busily setting the table
all he could catch of the conversation. Suddenly he squeaked to his
sister with a suggestive grimace:
“He’s a bachelor, Zilda!”
The girl dropped the cutlery as though unintentionally and disappeared.
Half an hour later she appeared, decked out in her best dress and with
two little round red roses painted on her cheeks.
Anyone entering the oratory of the fazenda at that moment would note
the absence of several petals of the red tissue paper roses that
adorned the image of Saint Anthony and a little candle lighted at the
feet of the image. In the country, rouge and marriages spring from the
oratory....
Trancoso was delivering a dissertation upon various agricultural
themes.
“The ‘_canastrão_’? Piffle!! A backward breed and very rank. My
favorite is the Poland China. The Large Black is also good. But the
Poland! What precocity! What a breed!”
Moreira, terribly ignorant on the subject, knowing only the famished
skinny ones without name or breed, that grunted in his own pastures,
unconsciously opened his mouth in astonishment.
“As far as bovine cattle is concerned,” continued Trancoso, “I think
that all of them from Barreto to Prado are entirely wrong. Completely
wrong, I say. There should be no selection or inter-breeding. I advise
the immediate adoption of the finer breeds; the Polled Angus and the
Red Lincoln. We have no pastures? We’ll make them. We’ll plant alfalfa.
Make hay, ensilage. Assis confessed to me once....”
Assis! the highest authorities on agriculture confessed to that man! He
was intimate with them all--Prado, Barreto, Cotrim ... and Ministers!
“Now, I told Bezerra....”
Never was that house honored with a more distinguished gentleman, so
well connected and so widely traveled.
He spoke of the Argentine and Chicago like someone who had just come
from there. Marvelous!
Moreira’s mouth opened and had almost reached the last degree of
aperture allowed by the jaws, when a woman’s voice announced breakfast.
Introductions. Zilda was the recipient of phrases never before dreamed
of, which made her heart leap for joy. So were the stewed chicken, the
pork and beans, the pasties and even the drinking water.
“In town, Mr. Moreira, water like this, pure as crystal, absolutely
drinkable is worth the best of wines. Happy are those who can drink it!”
The family looked at each other: they never imagined that they owned
such a precious thing, and each one involuntarily took a little swallow
of it as though acquainting themselves with it at that moment for the
first time. Zico even smacked his lips.
Dona Izaura could not contain herself with delight. The compliments to
her cooking captivated the good lady; she would have considered herself
well paid for the hard work with half that praise.
“Learn, Zico,” she whispered to her son, “that’s what a gentleman
should be!”
After coffee, hailed with the word “delicious!” Moreira invited the
young man for a turn on horseback.
“Impossible, my friend, I do not ride after meals; it gives me
cephalalgy.”
Zilda blushed. Zilda always blushed when she did not understand a word.
“We will go this afternoon, I am in no hurry. Now I prefer a short walk
through the orchard to aid the digestion.”
While the two men went slowly in that direction, Zilda and Zico flew
for the dictionary.
“It isn’t among the S’s,” said the youth.
“Look for it with a C,” suggested the girl.
After some trouble they found the word.
“Headache! Well, I never! Just that....”
In the afternoon on the ride, Trancoso admired and praised all that he
saw, to the astonishment of the planter, who, for the first time, heard
his belongings praised.
Usually buyers run down everything, looking only for faults; they begin
to exclaim about the dangers of loose soil as soon as they come across
a crumbling bank; they find the water scarce and bad; and if they see
an ox they glue their eyes on the parasites.
Not Trancoso! He only praised! As Moreira, when they passed the
counterfeited places, pointed to the standards with trembling finger,
the young man exclaimed in astonishment:
“_Caquéra!_ Why this is wonderful!”
At sight of the _Pau d’Alho_, his amazement reached its height:
“What I see is marvelous! I never expected to see even a vestige
of such a tree in these parts,” he said slipping a leaf into his
pocketbook as a souvenir.
In the house he unbosomed himself to the old lady:
“Well, madam, the quality of the soil is far beyond my expectations.
Even _Pau d’Alho_! It is really astonishing!”
Dona Izaura lowered her eyes.
The scene occurred on the veranda.
Night had fallen.
A night humming with the chirp of crickets, the croaks of frogs,
numberless stars in the sky and endless peace on earth.
Trancoso, stretched out on a lounging-chair, transformed the torpor of
digestion into poetic lassitude.
“How charming is the chirp of the crickets! I adore starry nights, the
rustic life of the country, so healthy and happy!...”
“But it is very lonely....” ventured Zilda.
“Do you think so! Do you prefer the strident song of the cicada tuning
up in the bright sunshine?” said he in a mellifluous voice. “Then it
must be that some shadow darkens your little heart.”
Moreira seeing that sentimentalism was coming into play and in this way
liable to lead to matrimonial consequences, slapped his forehead and
cried out: “The devil! If I wasn’t forgetting all about....” He fled
precipitately, leaving the two alone.
The dialogue continued, all honey and roses.
“You are a poet!” exclaimed Zilda at one of his sweetest warblings.
“Who would not be, beneath the stars of the heavens and beside a star
of the earth?”
“Poor me!” sighed the girl, her heart beating fast.
From Trancoso’s heart also rose a sigh. He lifted his eyes to a cloud
that took the place of the Milky Way in the sky and he murmured a
soliloquy strong enough to bring a girl to terms:
“Love! ... the Milky Way of Life! The perfume of roses, the veil of
dawn! To love, and listen to the stars.... Love, for only he who loves
can understand what they say!”
It was sour contraband wine; but to the girl’s inexperienced palate it
tasted like Lachryma Christi. Zilda felt the fumes go to her head. She
wanted to reciprocate. She searched the rhetorical nosegays of her mind
so as to cull the most beautiful flower and found only a humble jasmine.
“What a beautiful thought for a postal-card!” she said.
They did not go beyond the jasmine; coffee and fried cakes interrupted
the budding idyl.
What a night! One would say the angel of happiness had spread his
golden wings over that lonely house. Zilda saw all the love tales she
had ever devoured come true. Dona Izaura enjoyed the hope of marrying
her off wealthy. Moreira dreamed of settling debts with a big surplus
tinkling in his pockets. And Zico, transformed in his imagination into
a grocer, the whole night in dreams sold on credit to Tudinha’s people,
who, finally charmed by so much kindness, gave him the daughter’s much
desired hand.
Only Trancoso slept the sleep of the just; dreamless and undisturbed by
nightmares. How good it is to be rich!
The next day he went over the remainder of the fazenda,
coffee-plantations and pastures; examined the live-stock and
out-buildings; and as the amiable young man continued to be charmed,
Moreira, who the night before had decided to ask forty contos for
Espigão, thought it wise to raise the price. After the scene of the
_Pau d’Alho_, in his mind he raised it to forty-five; after the
examination of the live-stock it had already risen to sixty. And thus
when the great question was broached, the old man declared courageously
in the firm voice of an _alea jacta_:
“Seventy-five!” and waited standing for the storm to burst.
Trancoso, however, found the price reasonable.
“Well, it is not expensive, the price is more moderate than I expected.”
The old man bit his lips and tried to retract.
“Seventy-five, yes, but ... not including the cattle!...”
“That’s fair,” answered Trancoso.
“... also not including the pigs!”
“Exactly.”
“... and the furniture!”
“Naturally.”
The planter choked; there was nothing more to exclude; he confessed to
himself that he was an ass. Why had he not said eighty right off?
The wife informed of the case, called him a fool.
“But, woman, at forty it was already a good business!”
“For eighty it would have been doubly good. Don’t excuse yourself. I
never saw a Moreira who was not slow and stupid. It’s in the blood. You
are not to blame.”
They sulked for a while but the eagerness to build air-castles with the
unexpected pile of money swept the cloud far away.
Zico took advantage of the favorable occasion to insist upon the three
contos for setting up the business and was promised them.
Dona Izaura no longer wanted the little cottage. Now she remembered a
larger one on a street where processions passed--Eusebio Leite’s house.
“But that one is worth twelve contos,” warned the husband.
“But it is far better than that shanty. Very well arranged. Only I
don’t like the windowless room near the pantry; it’s too dark.”
“We could put in a sky-light.”
“The yard, too, needs to be made over; instead of the chicken
enclosure....”
Until far into the night, while sleep did not come, they remodeled the
house, transforming it into the loveliest dwelling in town. The couple
were giving the last touches, and beginning to get sleepy when Zico
knocked at the door.
“Three contos are not enough, father, I need five. There are the
arrangements that I had not thought of, the license and the rental and
other little things....”
Between two yawns the father generously granted six.
And Zilda? She floated along on the high seas of a fairy tale.
Let her float on.
Finally the day arrived for the amiable buyer to leave. Trancoso bid
goodbye. He was sorry that he could not extend the delightful stay, but
important affairs called him back. A rich man’s life is not as easy as
it seems.... As to the business, it was all but closed; he would give a
definite answer within the week.
Trancoso left carrying a parcel of eggs,--he had highly appreciated a
breed of chickens raised there; and a little bag of yams,--a dainty of
which he was very fond.
He also took with him a fine present, Moreira’s sorrel, the best horse
on the farm. He had praised the animal so much during his rides that
the planter had been obliged to refuse an exchange proposed and make
him a present of it.
“Just see!” said Moreira, voicing the general opinion. “Young, very
rich, straight as can be, learned as a doctor and, nevertheless,
amiable, polite, incapable of turning up his nose at things like the
idiots who have come here. That’s a gentleman for you!”
The old lady was specially pleased at the young man’s lack of ceremony.
To take away eggs and yams! How nice of him!
They all agreed with her, each one praising him in his or her way. And
thus, even absent, the amiable and wealthy youth was the talk of the
household during the entire week.