The Medeiros Family

This is the first work I have published, printed in the workshops of the Typographia Paulista.

I could not have chosen a better book for my debut. The author, already well known in our literary circles for the talent and learning she has shown in all her writings, has given this work, now published in a second edition, a genuinely national character, revealing her great powers of observation and succeeding, in her narrative, in uniting beauty of form with truth in the portrayal of our customs.

Further proof of the book’s merit is the very rare fact that its first edition sold out in about three months.

It is not I, then, who commend the work to the reader: the author and her book will commend my enterprise, introducing it to the public, from whom I hope for the reward of my efforts and goodwill.

The Publisher

The train had stopped at one of the stations on the Paulista Railway, in the west of the province of São Paulo. Settling his traveling cloak about him, Octávio Medeiros stepped down with a cheerful, decisive movement. Moments later the train pulled away again, sending its shrill whistle and its pure white plume of smoke into the intensely clear morning air. The smoke rose in spirals, unfurling like a victorious flag.

Octávio left his bags at the station and walked down to a low redbrick house with its shutters open. In an ivy-framed window, a brown patativa sang in a simple wire cage—a bird he had not seen for many years. From inside the room came the monotonous murmur of a man reading a scientific book aloud, always in the same singsong voice. Octávio came closer and sat on the windowsill.

“Good morning, Dr. Morton!” he called with a smile.

Dr. Morton turned, resting his large, very blue eyes on the newcomer.

“Don’t you remember me?” Octávio went on, still smiling.

“Yes… yes… wait… ah! Mr. Medeiros. Well, my dear fellow, come in, come in!”

The old man went around through the passage to the front door, joyfully holding out his hands to his friend.

“Do you know you’re the first person I’ve come to see?”

“Oh, what an honor!… But tell me, is your family expecting you?”

“No. My father advised me to tour the principal countries of Europe once I had finished my studies. But as soon as I completed my course, I decided to leave, so my arrival will be a surprise. I’m counting on you for a piece of information: are my parents at the plantation?”

“They’ve been there for perhaps more than a month. Now I understand why you came to see me first. I’m not offended; it’s only natural. Meanwhile, let’s talk while they get my horse ready for you.”

After going inside to give his instructions, Dr. Morton sat down beside the traveler again. He took off his silk cap, revealing his large, shining bald head, and smoothed his clean-shaven face with his hand before beginning:

“You’ll find great changes at home… Your elder sister is about to be married. She’s spoken of as one of the prettiest girls in the whole district… The other has left the school at Itu and has a German governess, whom I recommended myself, as it happens. A good woman, learned and strict…”

“And my mother? Has she aged a great deal? She’s had so many sorrows…”

“Not at all! Your mother is just as she always was: resigned in sad times, calm in happy ones. I suppose she knows how to laugh and how to cry, but I can only suppose it, for I’ve never seen her do either! As a rule, ladies in the provinces take great care not to show their feelings, and your mother seems to carry that to extremes!”

“But is she plump? Is she well?” Octávio asked, almost impatiently.

“Yes… she is.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then the old man asked:

“And your traveling companions—João Nunes, Penteado, and Rodrigo Costa, I think?”

“Costa went later.”

“Well… and how are they?”

“Still there.”

“Studying?”

“Spending…”

“Time?”

“And money…”

“They needn’t have left here to do that. It’s extraordinary! Most of the young men who go to Europe to study come back just as they were, if not worse!”

“What can you expect? There are many ways of living in the great capitals, and almost always the most enticing is the one that leaves you least to show for it. Even I—the only one of our group of six to finish my course—could have come back sooner if I hadn’t wasted the first year in the enchantment of everything new! I owe my reform to an unpleasant circumstance…”

“Some misfortunes turn out for the best…”

“Exactly.”

“And what was this circumstance? Forgive an old friend’s curiosity.”

“A heavy financial loss my father suffered. The year 1880 went badly for him. A severe frost destroyed the harvest. Besides that, Elias Brandão, his commercial representative and commission agent in Santos, went bankrupt, bringing our family almost to ruin.”

“I remember it well.”

“Well, that was what opened my eyes and gave me the will to study. They painted our situation in dark colors, which distance made still more frightening. My allowance was cut to a third, and I had to economize and change my habits. Around that time I met a German philosophy student, a talented young man of little means. We lived together in a boardinghouse in a modest, inexpensive neighborhood. I let his influence take hold of me and drew away from my countrymen and the parasites who preyed on them… And do you know what I’m convinced of now? That with willingness, or necessity, you can learn just as well in any country!”

“Still, believe me, there are few countries where people study as they do in Germany. It is rightly called a nation of thinkers. Edward, an old friend of mine, a tireless traveler and a keen observer, used to say to me: ‘In France they laugh, in Italy they dream, in England they work, in Russia they conspire, in Spain they talk, and in Germany they think!’”

“And he should have added: in Brazil they sleep.”

“Perhaps he did. I no longer remember every definition. I could never forget the one about Germany, because to me thought is the most beautiful of human faculties.”

“That depends… You see, Doctor, thought can sometimes make action useless.”

“Nonsense! It’s thoughtless action that is always useless!”

“Agreed. What I mean is that too much thought absorbs a man’s vital energies. The mind must be subjected to a discipline that not everyone is capable of. Take me, for instance. What good did it do me to spend so many years in Europe studying and looking at works of art, when each one awakened in me the desire for some great undertaking that I shall never be able to carry out? As I study one, another seems more beautiful, and I go on swaying endlessly from idea to idea without settling on a single one! I feel I shall never be of any use, precisely because I think too much!”

“Don’t say that! You’re young and intelligent, and you had the good sense to choose engineering, the scientific profession most useful to your country. You’re bringing your energies to a land where there is so much to build. You’ll have the chance to discover the great—the immense—advantages you’ve gained from contemplating those works of art you’ve just mentioned. As a student of engineering, you saw extraordinary buildings, bridges, aqueducts, churches, whole cities with a character of their own; ruins, castles, styles ancient and modern, varying with the places and the races. Well, do you think all that was fruitless? You’re mistaken. The impression left by Europe’s wonders is worth all your books and opens a broader and far more beautiful road before you. If at first all those splendors crowded your mind in confusion, now that your enthusiasm has matured and grown calmer, you will be able to admire them in their true proportions. Look, a painter undoubtedly makes more progress by visiting the Louvre for a month than by working for a year in a city without museums. Old as I am, I still feel the stirrings of ambition: to roam the world and delight in learning. If I neither travel nor see its sights, it is for a very simple reason… You can easily guess what it is—poverty.”

As he spoke, the doctor showed his sound white teeth in a gentle smile. His short, plump hands rested on the arms of his chair, and he was bathed in the daylight coming through the window opposite.

“I’m honestly surprised, Doctor, that a man as learned and observant as you can resign himself to living in this corner of the world, where there can hardly be much to occupy a mind like yours.”

“You’re mistaken, my friend. I live very happily. There is a captivating kindness in the Brazilian character; the people’s openness is charming, their hospitality unequaled. If one cannot live in the country of one’s birth, there is no more beautiful homeland, nor any where one can feel so much at ease. I have been here for many years, and I have never thought of leaving without already feeling how I would miss it. There is only one thing here that disgusts and saddens me. I needn’t tell you what it is; you can guess. But that too will soon disappear, because, Octávio, Brazil is no longer sleeping. It is working.”

“I’ve followed Brazil’s abolitionist movement with joy. I was always searching eagerly through the newspaper dispatches for everything about that great work. Still, from so far away, one cannot form an accurate picture of things that newspapers exaggerate and translations distort.”

“Be careful! Don’t go airing ideas about progress and humanity at your plantation. Abolition will come sooner or later. But affection within a family, once broken, never becomes truly firm again.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because your father is one of abolition’s greatest enemies. Do you understand now?”

“Perfectly. I’ll be discreet if I’m convinced that my help is not needed at all by the holy cause, as the newspapers call it.”

The doctor was about to answer when a servant came to say that the horse was at the door.

“Well, Octávio, I mustn’t be selfish and keep you here. You must be eager to reach Santa Genoveva, mustn’t you? Perhaps you’d like someone to go with you and show you the way…”

“Don’t do me the injustice of supposing I’ve forgotten the way home!”

“You’re right! If I could arrive in my own village today, I would find my way to my parents’ old house with my eyes closed! That is a feeling sharpened by exile, whether voluntary or involuntary: love for one’s family and native country.”

Then he took out his watch and reckoned:

“In two hours you’ll be among your own people… A good journey to you.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Come and have a talk sometime!”

“I will, sir. Goodbye!”

The horse set off, its hooves striking the paving stones.

The doctor went back into his study, stretched out on the cane sofa, picked up his book, and, covering his bald head with his black silk cap, resumed his interrupted reading in the same monotonous singsong.

Octávio remembered everything as he passed: the low houses with a door in the middle and the same number of windows on either side; Theodoro’s shop on the corner, with bolts of red baize piled up and bales of cotton; the pharmacy of old Anselmo, tall and very thin, who sat reading beside the counter, his spectacles perched on his great hooked nose and his thin lips moving continually; Dona Maria do Carmo’s school, from which came the cheerful chatter of the poor little children; and, next door, German Guilherme’s tavern, swept clean, its open doors revealing a fair-haired young woman nursing an even fairer baby that kicked its little feet in the air.

Every so often he met someone he knew, whom he greeted without stopping to speak, as everyone did in the country. The houses grew fewer. He saw two new chalets on the land belonging to Major Caetano, the town’s former Conservative Party leader, whose own house stood farther off, falling into decay behind the walls of its grounds, which the rains had stained with broad green streaks.

Farther on, in a narrow valley, Black women in short white skirts and high-necked blouses sang as they beat clothes on the stones of the river, which wound merrily along like a narrow silver ribbon. Then came Councillor Bettencourt’s property. There, indeed, something had changed: the house had another story, with a balcony overlooking the garden behind its iron railings, and an ungainly dovecote painted green, where hundreds of pigeons settled, noisily fluttering their beautiful wings and graceful little heads. Over the orchard wall, the vigorous branches of three avocado trees, laden with leaves and fruit, hung out above the road. On the opposite side, in the distance, lay dark green hills studded with pale stones, and between them and the road stretched a vast expanse of gently rolling ground, covered with yellow grass and flooded with sunshine.

The road grew monotonous. Now and then a carriage came hurtling down the slope, raising clouds of reddish dust and jolting the ladies on their seats in their linen dust coats and straw hats trimmed with colored veils. Octávio greeted them without recognizing them, and they passed each other. A little farther on came an ox cart, its axle groaning three notes that sounded pleasant at a distance but piercingly irritating close at hand. The sweating oxen, urged on with a goad, walked slowly downhill. A Black man with his trousers rolled up and his shirt open at the chest walked beside them, while above, on the firewood piled high, a boy lay on his stomach, propped on his elbows, sucking an orange. Octávio recognized these familiar figures: he had spent his whole childhood here and remembered everything vividly.

Beyond a watering place, where the horse drank at length, the road forked. The right-hand branch ran straight ahead; the left climbed in zigzags and, being narrower, lay in deeper shade. Fewer people used it. It was almost a private road, shared only by two or three plantation owners. Octávio took this turning. From then on he met only one person: a man faithful to the old customs of the São Paulo traveler, wearing a great poncho the color of coffee with milk, striped with white, which fell from his shoulders and spread over the horse’s haunches, knee-high boots, silver spurs, and a broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a whip with a thick leather handle. Behind him, at a respectful distance, galloped his attendant, with a stout red-striped blanket rolled like a bolster and laid in front of him across the saddle. After that, no one. Giant trees, intertwined vines, shrill birdsong, the murmur of water in ravines scented with vanilla—ravines of delicious coolness, clothed in pale leaves and little colored flowers.

After an hour’s riding, Octávio saw, far away to the left of the valley, on the opposite hill, the bell tower of Santa Genoveva and the white walls of his parents’ house. His heart beat violently. A powerful emotion shook him.

By one of those strange associations that sometimes bring two different things into the mind at once, he remembered his childhood and seemed to see himself in those distant days, returning from watching some procession in town, leaning against his mother’s knees and looking out at the road with calm indifference. And as the memory struck the painful note of longing in his soul, he silently recited João de Deus’s exquisite lines:

I saw your lovely face,
That face beyond compare!
I watched from far away, silent and still,
Like one returning from a harsh exile
Who sees rise through the air
The smoke of his own hearth!

How well he understood now the sweetness of that feeling! With what joy and tenderness he looked at the bell tower and the white walls of the house!

The day changed suddenly. Clouds gathered, dimming the sun’s warm light. From far away the voices of the enslaved people reached him in a strange, enchanting rhythm, entering his soul like an echo of longing. As he descended farther, a bend in the road hid the house and bell tower from sight. Above his head the trees interlaced their leafy branches, and the wind sent a stray leaf brushing against his face, shoulder, or hand like a caress.

Emerging from that fragrant, shadowy tunnel, he came upon the plantation gate. There, as in the old days, he could still read in large white letters the name Santa Genoveva, which had been his grandmother’s name.

At each impatient movement of its rider, the horse quickened its pace.

Octávio crossed half a league of coffee fields and then the pasture, where cows licked their calves and goats bounded away.

At the far end stood the kitchen-garden wall. He rode beside it and entered a large courtyard. A few little Black children were marching around it in a noisy procession, with a newspaper fixed to the end of a stick for a banner.

To one side, at the entrance to the henhouse, a woman in a light-colored cotton dress, her black braids fastened in a thick coil at the nape of her neck, stood with her back to him, tossing handfuls of corn from a gourd bowl to the birds.

“Noemia is a child,” Octávio thought, “and Nicota is fair… Who can that young woman be?”

At that moment he heard a cry of surprise. Looking up, he saw his elder sister on the veranda. She had recognized him.

“Octávio!”

“Nicota!”

He dismounted hastily and, embracing his sister, went into the very long dining room, lit by windows at either end.

His mother sat cross-legged in a hammock, sorting greens for dinner—the tender squash shoots called camboquira^2-1 and watercress—from one little basket into another. Her son ran to embrace her, and the poor woman, breathless with surprise and joy, burst into tears.

The schoolroom was next door. Hearing the commotion, Noemia, the younger sister, abandoned her lesson and left her teacher alone to come smiling into Octávio’s arms.

She was a delicate little creature, though not pretty, with blue-gray eyes, brown hair, and a rosy complexion: small and lively.

Nicota was fair-haired, tall, and full-figured, with the grave, sober bearing of a matron. She was the handsomest member of the family, and even her parents seemed to hold her in awe.

“And Father?”^2-2 the newcomer asked his elder sister.

“He’s in there. I’ll send for him.”^2-3

“No! I’d rather go to him.”

With his mother and sisters, Octávio went down the long, dark passage to one of the front rooms. They pushed open the door and entered.

Nothing there had changed. As seven years before, the same furniture stood in the same places: the sofa and armchairs opposite the windows, the piano covered in cotton printed with large sprays of leaves, two hammocks at the far end, one on either side, and between them the old console table, completely bare of ornaments.

Comendador Medeiros was asleep in one of the hammocks, belly upward, breathing heavily, his mouth half open, his felt hat fallen over his eyes, and his armadillo-hide whip stretched full length on the floor.

Waking at the sound of footsteps and Noemia’s shrill little laughs, the comendador stared in astonishment at his son.

“What the devil!” he exclaimed, restraining his joy. “So you turn up like this,^2-4 without a word of warning?”

They embraced for a long time. Then Octávio told him everything in detail: how he had finished his studies and how eager he had been to see the family. He described the voyage to Santos, where he had landed, the ascent of the Cubatão mountains, and his impatience.

His mother and sisters listened closely, leaning toward him. His father stretched from time to time, concealing his emotion.

After a long conversation, the master of the house turned to Nicota.

“Remember that your fiancé is coming to dinner today. My compadre Antunes sent word.”

“I already know Nicota is to be married,” Octávio replied, smiling. “Dr. Morton told me that great piece of news.”

“And did Dr. Morton tell you about Eva too?” Noemia asked eagerly.

“Eva… no. Who is she?”

“Our cousin, Uncle Gabriel’s daughter. She lives with us now,” the girl went on.

“Uncle Gabriel!… Has he made his peace with Father?” Octávio asked, turning to the comendador.

“I wish he hadn’t,” his father answered.

“Why ever not?”

“He left me his daughter, who is…”

“An angel!” Noemia broke in.

“An angel indeed! A devil of the worst kind!” the plantation owner concluded furiously. Nicota smiled; Noemia bowed her head in sadness; their mother turned her eyes impassively toward the window. Octávio thought it wiser to change the subject.

The hours passed. The ladies withdrew, one to give instructions, the others to dress and write to their friends announcing their brother’s arrival. The comendador and his son were left alone and began to discuss farming. Octávio listened unhappily as his father expounded old ideas laden with rancor and resentment. From time to time he ventured a comment or praised some new method, taking care not to upset him, as though dealing with a child. The plantation owner indignantly rejected his son’s ideas and, seizing upon them, launched into a wild tirade against the reformers, against modern theories, against everything and everyone.

Octávio suggested that agriculture in Brazil ought to be regarded as one of the noblest pursuits, and one most worthy of study and reform.

His father declaimed, cursing the abolitionists, those “fishers in troubled waters,” those thieves! He went on railing against the execrable race, concluding: “The blacks run away, get free, and the wretched farmer hasn’t even the right to complain! Villains! Scum!”

The language was painful to Octávio’s ears. Inwardly he shuddered with disgust and sadness. He was on dangerous ground. He refrained from pursuing the subject. Let his father roar as much as he liked; he would respectfully restrain himself. He imagined that he could gradually break down his father’s bronze-hard selfishness and at last see him cooperate in that great work of humanity and patriotism. He must carefully seek favorable opportunities to develop his idea fully. At this moment everything would be useless: the comendador was too worked up to listen, and on this day Octávio could not bring himself to quarrel about anything with the old man to whose arms he had returned so joyfully. He held back while his father went on cursing this age of abuses and attacks upon other people’s property.

“If they ever think of coming to Santa Genoveva,” he exclaimed, “those abolitionist bandits, I know how I’ll receive them—with gunfire! I’m defending my property. I’m within my rights. The authorities are to blame too, for not muzzling those newspaper dogs who bark and bark so that others can bite!”

At this point there was a gentle knock at the door, and a woman’s voice asked from outside:

“May I come in, Uncle?”

“Bah! Here comes the meddler!… Come in!”

Octávio rose and stepped back a little to lean against the piano. The door was gently pushed open, admitting the same person he had seen from behind feeding corn to the birds.

“You’ve come at a very bad moment, Eva…” the comendador said dryly.

“I won’t stay long.”

Octávio had not been noticed and was watching the newcomer closely.

She was a young woman, slender and lightly brown-skinned, with abundant black hair, an oval face, eyes fringed by long, very dark lashes, regular features, and a firm step. She held her head high without affectation or pride. Her voice was deep and full, her manner serene. She wore her precisely fitted percale dress with simplicity.

“What is it?” her uncle asked.

“I’ve come to ask you to forgive Manuel. He promises to be obedient from now on. Will you order his irons removed?”

“Nonsense! Leave that alone. It’s no business of young ladies. If you don’t want to see the black man in irons, don’t look at him.”

“I don’t look, but that doesn’t stop me knowing he’s wearing them, and it hurts me.”

The comendador burst out laughing. A flash of indignation passed through Eva’s eyes, and a contemptuous smile curved her lips.

“I’ve lost count of the times I’ve forgiven the slaves’ offenses at your request! Look, you’d better go and get ready for dinner. Here’s my son, who arrived today, and I’m expecting friends in half an hour.”

Eva turned her eyes calmly toward Octávio and greeted him coldly, without taking a step forward. Then, in an apologetic tone, she said:

“I didn’t know you had arrived. I’ve only just come…”

“From one of the slave quarters,” her uncle interrupted ironically.

“That’s true,” she confirmed. “From the slave quarters. I went to see Josepha, who is ill. On my way out I met Manuel, who asked me to intercede for him. I promised to come to his aid and came straight here.”

“You shouldn’t promise what you can’t carry out.”

Eva looked at her cousin as if asking for help. Octávio approached the plantation owner and said with feeling:

“My arrival can be the occasion for showing mercy to the poor man. In the name of our great joy at seeing one another again, Father, I ask you to grant Cousin Eva’s request.”

The comendador pretended to reflect for a moment, then turned to his niece.

“Very well! I forgive him for today, but don’t make any more requests of that kind!”

“Thank you.” And Eva left the room without haste.

Octávio felt his curiosity sharpen concerning this cousin he had never known, whom he now found under his father’s roof, regarded by some as an angel and by others as a demon. In an instant he understood Eva’s sad position, accepting as charity a roof over her head and bread from an old, bitter enemy of her father. Yet he refrained from asking any questions while the comendador was so incensed against her. He sensibly reflected that any account would be colored by passion, and resolved to wait until he found his father in a calmer mood. Already, deep in his mind, he was convinced that Noemia’s judgment was the right one. “Eva is an angel!” she had said, and after witnessing that scene he understood her. Only angels face the hostility of the powerful on behalf of the weak and oppressed. Only angels bear insults humbly when the cause they plead is that of the unfortunate.

Yes, Noemia was right… Eva was an angel.

The mistress of the house had taken care to send for her son’s trunks without delay. While the family spent the morning talking, hearing about his voyage, his examinations, and the various incidents that entertained them, a servant had ridden off at full speed on this thoughtful errand. At two o’clock Octávio was happily changing his clothes in his old room, a small white room with a window overlooking the fields. At three he joined his father in the same front room, where they were already waiting impatiently for him and to which he had been summoned while still beginning to button his collar before the mirror. Reaching the passage, he saw the visitors’ carriages drawing up in the yard. His father beckoned him closer.

Comendador Medeiros stood on the landing, radiant with joy, receiving his friends and introducing them to his son one after another.

“Major Trigueiros, Nicota’s future father-in-law…”

Major Trigueiros was a tall, thin old man with a large mustache and a white goatee, a short, wrinkled face, round brownish eyes, and odd, angular movements that reminded anyone watching him of the extravagant, outlandish figure of a stork.

Octávio greeted him cordially. Next came Nicota’s fiancé, Álvaro Trigueiros, a short, dark young man with a sparse beard clipped close to his expressionless face, thin, wide lips, and hair falling over his forehead in a flat, glossy mass. Now it was Azevedo, the public prosecutor, a young man of medium height, fair-skinned and blond, whose very blue eyes shone through his spectacles; he had a pointed beard and a carefully tended complexion. Last to come up was compadre Antunes, the only one Octávio already knew: a fat, graying man with short side-whiskers and a small nose buried between fleshy cheeks, an unbuttoned waistcoat, a coat shiny at the seams, thick lips, and closely trimmed nails. He had been overseer at Santa Genoveva for years, leaving the post to take charge of the plantation of a son who had been killed by enslaved people.

They all entered the drawing room, where none of the ladies had yet appeared. After half a dozen ordinary questions about the journey and congratulations on Octávio’s return, they split into groups and talked at their leisure about the recent elections and the coming harvests, manumissions and horse races. Major Trigueiros raised his harsh, cutting voice above all the others, hurling thunderbolts of fury at the Conservatives, who had made a strong showing at the polls, while compadre Antunes asked Azevedo whether he had enjoyed the latest race at the Campinas racecourse.

Yes, the prosecutor declared, and it was worth going there just to see the pretty girls of Campinas. “And Aranha’s mare, eh? What a fine animal! English, and a true thoroughbred! I won money on her three months ago. Now there’s a horse!”

Octávio approached his sister’s fiancé. Young Trigueiros shifted uneasily and spoke to him with embarrassment, often substituting an r for an l. Tired from the journey and the conversation, Octávio went to lean against a window.

The broad brick yard where the coffee was dried lay swept clean before the house. Two dogs slept stretched out in the sun at the foot of the stone steps. Farther down, golden light sparkled on the still water of the great pond,^3-1 and flocks of pigeons flew out from a dense clump of bamboo. The carriages, their horses unharnessed, stood in a row in the shade, tilted forward onto their shafts; on the side opposite the gate, pigs rooted among scattered corn husks. Far away, closing off the horizon, the forest joined earth and sky with a straight, mournful line.

That landscape held his interest more than anything being said inside. Octávio stayed there a long time, until someone came to call him to dinner.

In the large dining room, the table glittered with glassware. The ladies were talking at the far end. Octávio was introduced to Noemia’s teacher, Madame Grüber. The servants, and even the mistress of the house, simplified her name and called her merely Madama. She was a woman of forty, tall, thin, and very fair-haired, dressed in brown, with a man’s collar and a round ivory pin fastening the neck of her dress.

Nicota and Noemia wore matching blue dresses, with little black velvet bows at their wrists and throats. Their mother came and went, speaking quietly to the enslaved maids, jingling the cupboard keys, attentive and careful that nothing should be wanting.

They sat down at table, the men on one side and the ladies on the other, in the São Paulo fashion. Only at the far end was the arrangement altered for lack of space, and the prosecutor moved to the ladies’ side. Octávio was looking around, surprised not to see his cousin, when she appeared. She sat between the German woman and Dr. Azevedo, who rose, blushing, at the sight of her. At the head of the table the master of the house spoke very loudly to his guests. Beside him, Octávio endured the volleys of questions and answers. The noise was enough to bring the house down! Every so often the young man looked around. Young Trigueiros ate with his knife, his eyes on his plate. He drank no wine, merely wetting his lips now and then with a sip of water before going gravely back to stuffing his mouth with beans, greens, and puff pastries.

Opposite him, his fiancée, less absorbed in her plate, cast him a quick glance at long intervals. Noemia laughed loudly, sometimes giving little shrieks at compadre Antunes’s old jokes culled from almanacs. Their mother pointed out to the servants which glasses needed filling and which plates replacing. At the far end Madame Grüber ate without pause, while Dr. Azevedo leaned toward Eva and talked. She listened absently, using her bread to push food onto her fork.

An argument had broken out between Major Trigueiros and their host. Their voices rose; they shouted at one another. Comendador Medeiros answered the other man’s assertions with scorn: “Likely! Very likely!” The major’s goatee jutted out, advancing and retreating in constant motion. Meanwhile everyone else tried to speak more loudly so that their own voices would not be drowned. Suddenly the quarrel ended. The comendador drank a small glass of port and water, and the major, forgetting for a moment that he was not at home, planted his left heel on the bench where he sat, raising his pointed knee to the height of his beard.

Taking advantage of the lull, Azevedo stood, raised his glass, and toasted the Medeiros family, congratulating them on the return of one of their members. He devised a flowery speech in a lofty style, in which a historical name appeared from time to time like a scarecrow. It went on and on. He modulated his voice for effect, sweeping from its deepest notes to the shrillest falsetto.

The ladies listened motionless, their eyes fixed on him. Since dessert was now being served, Major Trigueiros was dipping a thick chunk of candied pumpkin into his large plate, which overflowed with milk, while compadre Antunes laid waste to the little glasses of sweet-potato preserve, a particular favorite of his.

When they rose from the table, Octávio sighed with relief. He needed fresh air and a rest for his battered ears, the diversion of a walk in the garden with his sisters and cousin.

But the comendador dragged him off with his friends to see the new machinery house, a long building at the foot of a hill, which they descended in the shade of flowering lemon trees. From there they went to the dam, the granary, the mill, and the new road, bordered by sugarcane of a soft, fresh green, as far as the coffee fields, where the swept lanes stretched out of sight. The comendador led the party, proud of his property. The others commented loudly on what they saw.

“Look here, my friend,” Major Trigueiros called, “your soil seems to be getting worn out…”

“Not a bit of it!” the plantation owner protested. “It’s never yielded as much as it does now!”

“That means nothing. I don’t like the look of all this dryness and yellow color!” He indicated the ground with his lower lip. “Mine is red. The soil farther inland is worth a great deal more…”

Azevedo walked beside young Trigueiros, talking in a discreet voice. Compadre Antunes, who was behind them, held Octávio back and asked abruptly:

“What did you think of your cousin?”

Receiving only a puzzled, surprised look in answer, Antunes went on:

“I’ll explain. That girl is sly. With that little saintly air of hers, she’s quite capable of turning this house upside down! It’s a good thing you’ve arrived, to keep an eye on certain matters… Eva is a schemer!”

Octávio smiled incredulously, but the other man insisted, bright flashes in his tiny eyes:

“She is, indeed! She detests your father, that’s the truth. She likes Azevedo, and Azevedo has his eye on her dowry… They both know the comendador owes the bank a very large sum…”

“And?” asked Octávio, in the same faintly mocking tone.

“And? The bank’s director is Azevedo’s uncle! Do you understand now?”

“Perfectly. It’s rather like the story of Chochurumello’s Castle.”

“That I can’t say, because I don’t know this story about a castle.”

“Well, my friend, it’s a serious matter. Imagine a dog that bit the cat that killed the rat that gnawed the strap that held the key to Chochurumello’s Castle.”

Antunes was indignant, disguising his anger with a forced laugh.

“Don’t suppose I’m joking,” he continued. “Take care! Your father already knows a good many things, and prudence keeps him silent. He is convinced, and has proof, that his niece wants to ruin him, to avenge the late Gabriel. Time will show whether I’m right to advise you to be watchful! Besides, that conduct with Azevedo is shameful… The marriage must be settled, and… they must be sent on their way!”

Octávio answered Antunes haughtily, pointing out that it was not his place to interfere in such serious affairs, and concluded:

“Eva is free. She will do as she thinks best.”

“Remember that in the end it’s your father who’s responsible for her foolishness!”

“Don’t trouble yourself about that.”

Octávio’s curt, decisive tone silenced the former overseer of Santa Genoveva, who muttered a few unintelligible words.

Ahead of them the party walked on, carefree and talkative.

Antunes quickened his pace and joined Major Trigueiros. Octávio watched Azevedo’s narrow back, his carefully tended, effeminate figure, his curly blond hair, on which the sunlight cast reddish, copper-colored gleams, and the very white hand with which he stroked his beard, appearing above his left shoulder in slow, caressing movements.

Suddenly Nicota’s fiancé turned and, seeing his future brother-in-law alone, suggested they wait for him.

The three continued together, with Octávio in the middle. Now more at ease, young Trigueiros asked him whether the trees in Germany were stunted, whether they drank good coffee there, whether the houses were luxurious and the people well-mannered.

Azevedo hid a delicate, ironic smile beneath his little blond mustache. Octávio kept answering in short phrases, as though the words cost him a great effort.

Young Trigueiros ended the conversation by inviting him to hunt pacas and partridges on his property. He was mad about that kind of sport. It ran in the family, he explained. His mother went out into the woods every day with her gun. She was fearless! His maternal grandfather, despite his eighty years, galloped for days on end over the plains of Jahu, sniffing out game…

And that short, thin, sallow little man, with false teeth and glossy locks soaked in Oriza, spoke of the chases and the hours lying in wait in the forest, presenting himself as skilled and agile as a woodland hero!

When they returned, the carriages were waiting ready in the yard. The visitors departed. Nicota and young Trigueiros said their goodbyes coldly; it was the last time they would see each other before the wedding, set for a fortnight later. Azevedo murmured something to Eva, who answered him guardedly. Octávio managed to catch the words:

“I’ll write tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

Eva withdrew, and the overseer came in to report to the master of the house, reproaching him for ordering Manuel’s irons removed.

“That devil’s a lost cause,” he said in his slow drawl.

The comendador explained what had happened, and the overseer shrugged in annoyance. Then came questions and reports about the work.

Octávio approached Noemia, who was leaning out of the window. The night was cold and dark; stars shone in the deep sky. Drawing his sister gently toward him, he asked:

“How do you spend your evenings here?”

“Very badly.”

“Really?”

“Just imagine: Mother gets up before dawn, and since she works so hard, she’s sleepy as soon as night comes. Father too. Nicota swings in her hammock or crochets. I don’t like hammocks or crochet, so I play with Vinagre or Júpiter. They can do lots of tricks. Would you like to see?”

“Tomorrow. And whose window is that, with the light?”

“Madame Grüber’s. Eva spends the evening in the teacher’s room. They read and work together.”

“Why don’t they spend it here in the sitting room instead, with everyone else?”

“Because the noise keeps them from understanding what they read, and Father, as you know, doesn’t like books in women’s hands…”

“Do you never join them in the evenings?”

“Never!”

“That’s a pity.”

“Why?”

“You’d have a chance to learn more and keep your mind occupied for a few hours.”

“I’m not clever, and I don’t understand German. I study in the daytime, yes, but at night I’m tired.”

“Does Eva speak German?”

“And French.”

“I can imagine… I’ll bet she can’t sew!”

“She sews very well, in fact…”

“Really?”

“Eva knows everything. I don’t know anyone else like her!”

“I see you’re very fond of her.”

“I am.”

“And Nicota?”

“She isn’t.”

“Why not?”

“She thinks Eva is very pretentious…”

“And isn’t she?”

“Not at all!”

“Dr. Azevedo seemed enchanted with the rose she wore on her breast…”

“She’s very fond of flowers.”

“And he’s very fond of her, isn’t that so?”

“Perhaps.”

“Has nobody ever spoken of it here?”

“Never.”

“Well, that’s surprising. How old is Eva?”

“Twenty.”

“Only twenty?”

“She doesn’t look any older.”

“She’s older than Nicota.”

“By a year.”

“But why do they dislike each other?”

“They don’t dislike each other. Eva likes Nicota. It’s Nicota who doesn’t like Eva.”

“Jealousy?”

“Of whom? No, I think it’s because Eva once said she’d never marry without love, the way…”

“Nicota is doing.”

“Exactly.”

“Whom did she say that to?”

“To us.”

“She’s romantic, but she’s right, after all.”

“Well, that was the reason. Nicota told Mother everything at once, Mother told Father, and…”

“Father got angry, naturally.”

“And he doesn’t want us to spend too much time with her, in case we catch her way of thinking.”

“How did she come here?”

“What?”

“Who brought her? What was the reason? How was it all arranged?”

“I was at school. I don’t know anything about it. But I think it was Dr. Morton who brought her.”

“Dr. Morton!”

“Yes. He was very close to Uncle Gabriel and was always Eva’s teacher. They’re very fond of each other.”

“Ah… So she was here already when you came home, Noemia?”

“Yes. She’d been living at Santa Genoveva for five months. She was still in deep mourning for her father. As soon as she saw me she came down those stairs and embraced me. I didn’t know who she was, and I was surprised. Then I asked Nicota, and when she told me she was our cousin I was very glad.”

“Does Eva talk much about her father?”

“Not much, but she often cries and reads his papers. When she goes to Mangueiral she can hardly bring herself to come back!”

“And what is Mangueiral? I don’t remember a single mango tree here!”

“There aren’t any here, as a matter of fact.”

“Then where is Mangueiral?”

“That’s the name of Eva’s property.”

“What! Eva has a plantation?”

“Why are you surprised? Uncle Gabriel was rich!”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I imagined she was poor. Is it near here?”

“Yes.”

“Does she usually go with Father?”

“No, just with Madame Grüber. Father doesn’t like going with her.”

“But if Eva inherited money, why does she live here?”

“Because it was Uncle Gabriel’s last wish. Look, Dr. Morton can explain it all to you.”

And Noemia went away, calling Júpiter to do his tricks.

In the large dining room, the varanda,^3-2 a lamp fixed to the wall confined its scant light to a small patch. The rest of the house lay in shadow, drowsy and funereal. The hammocks creaked on the iron rings fastened to the doorposts. Yawns could be heard. The overseer went on describing his day, dwelling on Manuel’s faults. Octávio did not wish to interrupt them and remained at the window, looking toward the part of the house where a lamp with a porcelain shade shone. Then he went down the steps and walked beneath the lighted window, sitting on a stone bench that seemed to have been put there expressly for him. Frogs croaked in the pools, and in the dark solitude of the sky the stars set trembling buds of light. From within the lighted room came a murmur of voices and a rustling of papers.

All day he had found no opportunity to talk to either of those women, undoubtedly the most intelligent people there, whose company would offer him the most diversion.

His mother’s passivity, his father’s way of thinking so opposed to his own, his elder sister’s coldness, and his younger sister’s innocence would oblige him to lead a withdrawn life for which he felt no inclination. Tired of his life as a young man alone, without a home or intimate joys, he had hurried eagerly back to his family, only to become convinced, on the very first day he saw and embraced them, that they would never understand him.

Disillusioned and embittered, he remembered Antunes’s impertinent insinuations and, as if in confirmation of them, his cousin’s parting words to Azevedo. He had not had time to form a settled opinion of Eva, and found it strange that everyone judged her differently. Her proud bearing, her head always raised as if defying danger, her calm gaze and firm step suggested a cold, haughty, inaccessible nature. Yet he remembered her sweet, clear voice, penetrating and gentle, and her intervention on behalf of the wretched slave, and wavered between innocence and compassion on the one hand, and calculated, hypocritical feeling on the other. He had come home to a problem: a being with wings to some and hooves to others, mysterious and all the more fascinating for it. Eva had shown neither surprise nor pleasure at her cousin’s arrival; she had received him like a stranger whose name she had never heard. Octávio reflected on this and again recalled the words she had spoken to Azevedo in the dim passage. After all, who could say? Perhaps Antunes was right.

His father’s dislike of his niece must have some basis to justify it. Eva had installed herself in the house of an old enemy of her family with some revenge in mind… That was what Antunes had wanted him to believe, and Antunes was, after all, a practical man…

No! That would be vile! But she was plainly a resourceful woman, a dangerous woman. Letting himself be carried away by a current of uncharitable thoughts, Octávio felt almost pleased to find in that solitude a reason to struggle, some powerful feeling that would pierce him and keep him from sinking into provincial apathy.

He was about to rise, having inwardly declared himself Eva’s opponent, when his cousin’s sweet voice, in a low register, recited some lines of Goethe inside the room. Octávio shivered. That voice, moist with freshness, falling serenely into the silence of the night, sounding in a language to which he had grown accustomed over so many years and in which he had expressed his first loves, moved him profoundly. He sat down again on the stone bench, scarcely noticing the fireflies glimmering here and there, and listened, enchanted and eager, to the melancholy words of Bettina’s old friend.

The next morning Octávio woke before dawn. Despite the fatigue of his journey and the strong emotions of the previous day, he had fallen asleep late. The bed had felt strange; he had been feverish. But when he opened the window that morning and looked out over the broad fields lit by the soft violet light of daybreak, he felt refreshed and happy. He remembered his childhood, when at that hour he would slip out into the yard with a glass in his hand, ready for the frothy milk still warm from the cow. He dressed, eager to walk through the woods whose trees he could see from there. Leaving his room, he met his mother, who was going with an enslaved maid to gather vegetables in the kitchen garden.

“Up already, Mother, at this hour!”

She explained that she always rose before dawn to see to the household, and advised him to have something to eat.

“I’ll go and get some milk, then join you in the garden.”

Octávio crossed the yard toward the cattle pen, where a tall Black man was milking a cow and calling roughly:

“Easy, Ladina! Would young master like some milk?” the enslaved man asked Octávio, turning his eyes toward him, their yellowish whites standing out against his dark face.

Octávio drained a freshly filled glass.

“Well now! Young master doesn’t remember me anymore!”

“What’s your name?”

“Me? My name’s Theodoro, yes, sir…”

“Theodoro…”

“Little Theodoro… Big Theodoro’s dead, yes, sir.”

“Ah! Narcisa’s son!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course. How could I fail to remember?”

The Black man laughed, rubbing his hands, then said awkwardly:

“We’d begun to think you weren’t ever coming back…”

“What did Big Theodoro die of?”

“Witchcraft, yes, sir.”

“And your mother?”

“She’s got the white blindness…^4-1 She doesn’t live here anymore, no, sir… Master sold her to Mr. Antunes…”

“Ah…”

“Traded her for a pair of mules…”

Octávio exchanged a few more words with Theodoro and went on to the kitchen garden, enclosed by walls, with a narrow green-painted gate standing ajar.

Just inside, a leafy grape arbor ran straight down the whole length of the path. Here and there along its sides stood bushes of perpetual roses, their fragrant flowers visited by little butterflies, simple white or straw-colored things. In the middle of the plot were narrow beds and an occasional shrub. Taking a path lined with quince trees, Octávio reached his mother some distance away, pulling an enormous beet out of the ground with both hands gripping its dark leaves.

Here and there the great blue bouquets of hydrangeas brightened the beds. On plantations, the kitchen garden and flower garden generally mingle a little: roses are planted beside turnips, and lilies bloom beside cabbages.

At Santa Genoveva the horta was orchard, vegetable plot, and flower garden all in one, enclosed by walls and set apart from the house. The gardener was an old, bald Black man, Torquato, who was put to work there because he could no longer manage the labor in the coffee fields easily.

Octávio recognized everything. Even the plants seemed unchanged; only the gardener was different. Old Thomé of former days must have died, naturally, since he had already been too old to be sold or traded for some animal…

Octávio joined his mother, smiling as he helped her gather the vegetables.

He felt light and happy. He drew the fresh morning air deep into his lungs; his hands were wet with dew from the plants he touched. He saw his mother’s tranquil face bathed in a gentleness like that of the saints on church altars.

They parted at the gate: she still had to look after the poultry and animals, while he was going to wander where he pleased.

Following the garden wall, Octávio reached the outer gate, opened it, and went down a broken slope where an occasional tuft of grass, half chewed by the animals, made a dirty green patch. Naked little Black children with enormous bellies and protruding navels rolled in the very dry, reddish earth. Below, at the foot of the hill, the pond lay calm and mirrorlike. He stopped there for a moment, drove into the water some ducks that were ambling lazily along its edge, then took a narrow path and plunged into the forest.

Little by little, thick foliage of a deep green closed more tightly around him.

Above his head was a dense vault through which the sky could scarcely be seen. Everything was green! A brilliant, uniform green that made him feel he was inside an immense emerald. The sunlight itself, filtered through the branches, fell emerald-green into that enclosure, where every tree possessed more pride and majesty than the most imposing columns of sumptuous temples.

Here and there, carpets of velvety moss, a tender green, spread over the damp, clinging earth, and the mild, exquisitely sweet scent of vanilla drifted through the forest. The birdsong, which seemed to intone a prayer, was accompanied below by the deep refrain of the narrow stream as it gurgled over pebbles and broken trunks on its way through the woods.

In the darkest hollows the close air smelled strongly of rotting leaves, heaped in overlapping layers on the ground.

Suddenly Octávio stopped in delight. Before him a large butterfly with blue wings traced with golden arabesques flew back and forth, now high, now low. Another followed, equally beautiful. Butterflies like these adorned the museums of Germany as rare treasures, spread flat, motionless and sadly cold beneath the glass of display cases, in the stillness and silence of dead things. Now here they were before his eyes, fluttering, light, capricious, trembling, now here, now there, now farther off, in shadow one moment and the next struck by a ray of sunlight falling through the trees’ luxuriant foliage.

After the butterfly came the iridescent hummingbird, a creature made of light and fragrance, all delicacy and tenderness, pausing to sip from a purple manacá blossom, its body suspended in the air and its fine beak buried in the flower’s cup.

Farther on, after crossing a brook, Octávio saw a family of multicolored insects nestled in the hollow leaf of a caladium, round and luminous, like a heap of precious stones tipped into an emerald jewel box. And everywhere there was greenery: in the coconut palms’ thick fronds and the soft lace of the ferns, in the leaves of tangled vines, in the treetops, in the moss and slime upon the ground, and in the still, shining water of the pools.

Octávio remembered his friend, the German student, who had so often questioned him about his country, awakening his curiosity about everything that had once left him almost indifferent, and teaching him to adore nature as the generous mother of so many blessings. Under the influence of that intelligent young man’s mind, his own had developed and learned to love the earth devotedly!

After walking a long way, Octávio emerged onto open ground above a hill visible from the back of the house. He had made a wide circuit without feeling tired. He descended into the valley to climb another slope that would bring him to his father’s steps. Below ran the river that drove the mill, and beside the bridge stood the newly built bathhouse. Octávio remembered some rocks nearby where, as a child, he used to sit and catch a few paltry little lambari fish for the supper couscous. Twenty paces farther on he found them, half covered with slime, piled one upon another in the shade of a wild fig tree’s branches, in a little spot far less picturesque than he had imagined. Longing certainly changes the look of things, the young man thought. He turned back, looking mechanically at a leaf he had plucked from the fig tree and held between his hands.

As he neared the bridge, he heard the bathhouse door creak. Looking up, he saw his cousin coming out, her hair still wet, unbound, falling like a heavy black mantle to the hem of her white dress. The water and the trees murmured as though whispering of love.

The birds sang joyfully, and in that concert of harmonies, among shadows, fragrances, and light, Octávio trembled with surprise, as the first man might have trembled in paradise, dazzled to see the first woman appear before him, radiant and beautiful.

“Eva!” he said, almost shyly.

His cousin smiled and held out her hand. They were walking side by side toward the house when Eva suddenly stopped.

“Oh, you haven’t seen your mamã yet!^4-2 The poor thing lives quite close by. Come, let’s go!”

“Thank you for reminding me of my duty…”

Octávio blushed at having forgotten the poor woman. Then, excusing himself:

“She ought to have come to see me yesterday…”

“She would certainly have wanted to. But the poor woman is paralyzed.”

“Is she?”

“Yes. She had a stroke and has never been able to get up since.”

“Poor Mamã!”

They went on in silence until they reached a windowless mud house. The nurse sat on the ground beside the door, picking over rice in a sieve and singing in a thread of a voice, thin and trembling. Illness had aged her greatly. She was shrunken, her tightly curled hair white, her cheeks as shriveled as dry grass. Even so, she worked and sang, always keeping her wasted hands and her little voice, weak as a child’s, occupied. It was not that work was assigned to her: she asked the other women for it to ease their burden.

“Mamã!” said Octávio, his eyes filling with tears as he came toward her.

The old woman started and fixed on the young man her blazing eyes, in which all her life seemed concentrated. The sieve fell from her hands; she waved her arms, choked with tears, beckoning him closer.

Octávio approached. She clasped his knees.

It was from that little old woman, her legs paralyzed, considered useless, thrown like a broken old pot into a filthy corner, that the greatest outpouring of joy at Octávio’s return came. Everyone else had received him with only a smile; she welcomed him with tears!

Eva left them to talk freely and went home alone. Octávio sat on the threshold beside the paralyzed woman, who kissed his hands respectfully and gazed at him with tenderness, in ecstasy, in rapture!

His nurse spoke of things from his childhood, asked whether the letters had conveyed the love she sent him, and complained that they had never given her his messages in return. Then she praised Eva warmly, concluding:

“Oh, how I wish you would marry her!”

When Octávio returned to the house, he found his father impatient at his delay. Breakfast should have been at nine, and it was almost eleven. Besides, the comendador had promised Antunes the day before that he would bring his son to dinner in town at the widow Teixeira’s.

At table he explained that the widow was Antunes’s sister, possessed an enviable fortune, and had a daughter who was quite irresistible! He declared:

“She’s the most beautiful woman in the whole district!”

“I don’t think so!” Noemia objected.

“Noemia is prettier,” Nicota said ironically.

“Not me! But I’m certainly livelier. Sinhá is a lump… At school she never knew her lessons!”

The comendador declared that Sinhá had very pretty manners and was very serious and self-contained.

After breakfast they took some time over their preparations. Octávio was annoyed. He had still had no chance to rest with his family or explore at leisure all the corners of Santa Genoveva that he had remembered so often in Europe.

It was one o’clock when they left the plantation. The sun was hot, the road dusty, and Octávio felt sleepy. Meanwhile his father was giving him the history of the Antunes family.

“They were good people, and well-bred.”

“Then why was he an overseer?”

“Well, it happened! People go through different times. In those days he had no money… Today he’s well off.”

“Did he inherit something?”

“Yes. A son left him a plantation in a very neglected state, but he soon put it right, and the fact is that he’s grown rich! Then his sister helped him too. He manages her affairs.”

“Ah…” Octávio yawned. “Was Antunes a widower?”

“No.”

“Then his son?”

“Was born out of wedlock.”

“Ah!” Another yawn, until, unable to resist any longer, Octávio leaned back in the covered carriage and fell asleep. He woke as they entered town, jolted by the paving stones, straightened up, and brushed off the dust. At three o’clock they stopped at the widow Teixeira’s door.

They went in and, received by Antunes, were taken to a front room on the right, where several men were already drinking beer. There they sat in dull idleness until they were called to dinner.

Then they joined the ladies gathered near the table. Among her friends, Antunes’s sister looked radiant, laughing at their whispered remarks despite the solemnity of the strict widow’s mourning she still wore.

Antunes introduced Octávio to the guests and family. Sinhá scarcely answered his greetings and remained impassive. She was beautiful indeed: tall, well-proportioned, with large dark eyes thickly fringed with lashes, fair skin, rosy cheeks, and regular features. But her face was so utterly motionless that Octávio turned his gaze away as though he had been looking at a dead woman. They lavished attention on him. His hostess looked at him with a motherly air; Antunes told him of his sister’s wealth and his niece’s dowry. Sinhá was an angel! He received and listened to it all without suspecting any hidden plan.

They returned late to Santa Genoveva. It was midnight when they arrived. Everyone in the house was asleep except his mother, who was waiting for them, rocking in her hammock.

Many days passed in perfect calm. Octávio went for walks, put his books in order, and took an interest in the plantation, encouraging his father to make a few changes. He planned to establish a factory on some land of his own and expected to settle pleasantly beside his family. He wanted to draw a plan of the plantation and spent several hours at this task. In the afternoon he accompanied his sisters, their teacher, and his cousin on a walk around the garden or the pond, and had opportunities to appreciate Eva’s education and Madame Grüber’s intelligence.

The comendador soon joined the party and allowed his son no conversation but his own. There was something constrained in his manner that spread to everyone else. A few days later the group broke up, each finding a reason not to go.

Eva decided to practice the piano at that hour. The German woman read. Noemia frankly admitted that these walks bored her, with their talk of politics or business, and Nicota sat by the window at her endless crochet.

Things continued in this way until one morning the plantation owner returned from a trip to town and knocked at his son’s door. Octávio was busy drawing and refining the plan of Santa Genoveva, listening with pleasure to his cousin singing in the distant drawing room.

The comendador was pleased and explained himself in a few words. He had been with Antunes. His friend had told him that his niece was in love with Octávio, and that the whole family rejoiced at it. Among her many suitors she had chosen him, proving her good sense and good taste by that very choice.

“The girl is beautiful, good, and rich—the best fortune in the district!” Medeiros concluded radiantly.

Octávio listened in astonishment to this unexpected declaration. Then he laughed. Antunes was amusing! So his niece spurned her suitors and chose him, who cared nothing for her!

“Are they mad, Father?” he asked at last, mockingly.

Very seriously, Medeiros replied that, on the contrary, nobody was more sensible.

“It doesn’t seem so… Well! What answer did you give?”

The comendador confessed that he had not expected his son to refuse, and still hoped to see him change his mind.

Octávio declared that he would never marry Sinhá. He found her dull, unintelligent, and altogether unattractive. Besides, he could not understand the girl’s love: she had seen him only once and had not even spoken to him!

“Because she has good sense. She isn’t flighty like… like most of them.”

“So because she’s sensible, she suddenly declares a passion and chooses a complete stranger for a husband?”

The plantation owner explained:

Octávio was no stranger at all. For a long time the Antunes family had cherished the idea of a connection with him. His compadre had known him as a child and knew his good instincts. Besides, he was returning from Europe with a degree, after successful studies, and bore one of the finest names in the province. Antunes read Octávio’s letters and praised him highly to everyone. That was why they had already regarded him as the fiancé of the beautiful and much-courted Sinhá even before he reached Brazil.

After a long speech extolling his friend’s niece, Medeiros assured his son that he would give no definite answer, still hoping to see him repent and ask for the hand of the girl whose cause he was pressing so insistently.

Octávio tried every persuasive means in vain to turn him from this entrenched desire. Impossible! It was a fixed idea, a plan matured over years, driven deep into that tenacious man’s brain. No strength or skill could dislodge it from his mind.

The plantation owner left his son’s room in a fit of ill humor, venting his anger on the slightest pretext. He struck a dog, drove the little Black boys from the passage, and slammed the doors of the room into which he withdrew, making them crash as though a strong wind had flung them shut.

Octávio thought for two minutes about the strangeness of the affair, lit and smoked a cigarette absently, then went serenely back to his interrupted plan.

That afternoon Comendador Medeiros did not honor him with his company. He mounted his horse and rode off down the road without saying where he was going. Octávio did not connect his father’s ill humor with their recent conversation, supposing him worried about some matter concerning the plantation. So, quite happily, he invited his sisters, their teacher, and his cousin to walk in the fields. They all accepted except Nicota, who was striving to finish her crocheted bedspread before nightfall.

The four set out along one of the few walking paths on that vast plantation, where no amount of space seemed enough for pasture and coffee fields. They thought of the woods. Octávio asked whether the ladies would have difficulty making their way through the undergrowth, almost impenetrable in places.

They laughed and assured him they had been there many times.

They went on more cheerfully, talking loudly, in a delightful freedom from care.

Madame Grüber gave guttural exclamations and chased butterflies with long strides, showing her flat feet and thin ankles. Eva chose and collected plants. Noemia made a noise, delighted in the others’ pleasure, leaped into the most difficult places, and adorned herself with flowers. Octávio cleared vines and drooping branches from their way and offered his hand to help them over the obstacles they met.

In this cheerful fashion they made a circuit of the woods, emerging onto the hilltop and descending to the valley where the narrow river flowed gently. As it was still early, they decided to spend a while beneath the wild fig tree, in the very spot where Octávio had fished as a child for little lambaris for the supper couscous.

Some sat on the grass, others on the roots of the tree. Noemia dipped her hands in the water and shook them over the turf, enjoying the sight of the little drops left glittering in the last rays of the sun. She paid attention to nothing else, wholly delighted by this childish game.

Octávio talked about Germany, describing its landscapes, customs, and people, encouraged by the kind remarks of the flattered Madame Grüber and by Eva’s curiosity.

His cousin, so unassuming in her simple, light-colored dress, her velvety gaze fixed on him, had never seemed so beautiful, so attractive, so sweet. Wanting to hear her speak, he asked whether she had no desire to see the same things, to appreciate Europe’s beauties for herself.

Yes, she answered, although her wish was to live where she had been born and where her parents had taught her to love. “My mother always told me,” Eva concluded, “that I should regard even the trees and flowers around me as sisters and give them all my affection. So I grew accustomed to loving them like family and missing them terribly whenever I went away, even for a few days!”

A little later, when the conversation turned to the love of flowers, Eva told them:

“Once, when I was still little, I was about to pull up some yellow four-o’clocks clumsily when I heard a very sad cry. I quickly drew back my hands, and my mother, who was watching nearby, said, ‘Do you see? That was a groan from the earth—the earth where you were born, my child, and from which you were trying to tear one of your sisters!’ From then on I truly worshipped plants and sometimes even kissed the flowers! I never knew where that groan had come from, reaching my ears at just the right moment… It was probably a sigh from my mother.”

Madame Grüber disapproved of anything with even the faintest trace of romanticism. She shook her head, smiling.

Noticing this, Octávio declared that such poetic images, in their innocence, awakened far more interest and belief in children than the matter-of-fact instruction by which so many people thought to prepare them better for life.

“To take illusions away from the only creatures capable of possessing them in their fullness—what barbarity, my God! To teach them to love nature as a mother, to kiss flowers as sisters—what a beautiful example for human wickedness!”

The teacher replied by setting out modern methods of education. Octávio listened, thinking how he might get Eva to recount more episodes from her childhood, longing to inquire into her entire past life, driven by the desire to know what she had felt on entering her uncle’s house alone and orphaned, and how she had been able to leave her parents’ home, for which she showed such deep affection.

He held back, waiting for an opportunity when he could learn everything without being indiscreet.

Night was falling. Against the fading sky, the trees on the opposite hill stood out in strange shapes. An owl passed in a low, soft flight and settled on the thatched roof of a slave dwelling, where it spread its great downy wings. It belonged there on that sad roof, where merry little birds could not sing without remorse. The nocturnal bird’s cry was not a hymn to freedom like theirs, but a cry of condemnation that mingled with the voices of the enslaved, joining their curses.

There were a few moments of silence. Noemia was the first to break it, suggesting they leave. They rose and set off for home, crossing the bridge and taking the narrow path that zigzagged up through the orange grove.

Madame Grüber breathed deeply, delighting in the plants’ fragrance. Noemia sang. Eva was silent, apparently immersed in the longing stirred by the memory of her mother. Octávio followed behind her, watching her all the time, feeling an ineffable, indefinable pleasure in treading in her footsteps, without really reflecting on anything. As they passed the paralyzed woman’s house, where she might already be sleeping the light sleep of the old and sick, he remembered his mamã’s words about Eva:

“How good it would be if you married her!”

The words had sounded like music in his ears and rose from time to time in his mind among reflections of every kind. With or without a reason, they kept vibrating there, ringing on, free and alone.

He had often found himself unable to sleep because some passage from an operetta repeated itself in his memory against his will. The same thing had happened with a line of verse on board ship, making him impatient. But this was the first time it had happened with a spoken phrase, and it seemed strange that it did not annoy him. On the contrary, it suggested a crowd of ideas that jostled one another.

When they entered the house, Comendador Medeiros had already returned from his ride. He retained his unpleasant manner; a dark thought clouded his face. He had shown his displeasure on learning that his son had gone with the ladies and was staying out so long. He had scolded his wife, who patiently submitted to the discharge of his anger, and forbidden Noemia to go out with her cousin again. When he saw the party arrive in the sitting room, he turned his back without answering their good evenings and went to his room, from which he did not emerge again that night.

The evening passed drearily. Supper was served an hour earlier than usual. They spoke softly, as though someone in the house were ill.

The storm remained dark throughout the following day. Medeiros did not appear before his family and made it known that he did not wish to be visited. “It’s his migraine,” his wife said placidly. “He’ll soon be well.”

Reassured by this explanation, the children felt no concern. They merely walked on tiptoe and left the piano closed.

After dinner Madame Grüber and Eva went out to the kitchen garden. Noemia and Nicota remained in the sitting room, the younger upset and tearful, the elder calm. Their mother had delivered the father’s message and prohibition to her daughter briefly, without comment. Octávio wandered about and eventually joined the foreign woman and his cousin. When they came back inside, the stars were already trembling in the still-pale sky.

The evening hours passed as monotonously as the night before. Eva had retired to the teacher’s room, and in the large, uncomfortable dining room, cold and poorly lit, the hammock rings creaked. Now and then enslaved servants passed in the distance, barefoot and noiseless, like mysterious shadows. Boredom soon brought sleep.

After a peaceful night, Octávio rose at six, took his usual walk, and lingered down on his own land, calculating the best site for the projected factory. On returning, he found his father standing in the doorway, his hat pulled down to his eyes and his whip held in his right hand. The plantation owner answered his son’s joyful greeting with a preoccupied air, saying he needed to speak to him alone. He went toward his room, gesturing for Octávio to follow. Once there, Medeiros held out a crumpled letter and said curtly, in the customary São Paulo form of address, “Read!”

Amid a great many meaningless expressions and colossal spelling errors, Octávio read a long anonymous denunciation of Dr. Azevedo and Eva. Hatred and a repulsive determination to stir up intrigue stood out from those filthy characters, spat out by a coarse pen.

After referring to the love affair between the orphan and the magistrate, the writer claimed to know that the two, aided by the foreign woman, were preparing an uprising among the enslaved people of Santa Genoveva. It would take place on the night of Nicota’s wedding. “Your house is a nest of abolitionists. Be on your guard.”

“Well?” asked the plantation owner, folding his arms. “What do you say?”

“I say this is an infamy,” Octávio answered in a low voice, his eyes still fixed on the letter.

“An infamy, yes!” his father added, blotched with anger. “She’ll pay for it, that…”

“Father,” Octávio interrupted quickly, “the infamy, the unspeakable wickedness, belongs to whoever wrote this letter. Eva is innocent, and instead of accusing her we ought to defend her!”

The comendador shouted, striking the furniture furiously with his whip.

Octávio continued:

“If she really loves Azevedo, why shouldn’t she marry him? You stand in her father’s place now; try to help her, if Azevedo is indeed, as I believe, worthy of such happiness.”

The plantation owner opened his mouth in astonishment. His son went on:

“As for their both being abolitionists, I see no reason to blame them. On the contrary, I see reason to praise them. I don’t believe Eva is working against her father’s brother, in whose house she lives. What could the poor girl do against you? Reflect for a moment on the difference between your power and hers, and you will calm down, Father.”

“What harm can she do me? Any harm! She can destroy my family… She has dangerous documents, and in these times, what couldn’t she achieve against me? She must go, that’s certain. I’ll send her away.”

Deep distress appeared on the comendador’s face. He sank onto the sofa and hid his face in his hands.

“I know nothing about Eva,” Octávio resumed. “I’ve known her only a few days, and nobody ever told me about her past. What caused the breach between you and Uncle Gabriel? I don’t know! What dangerous documents does Eva possess? I have no idea! Out of all this I think I understand only one thing: they are playing with her reputation, slandering her, and I must defend her. Remember, Father, that Eva has only us to advise and guide her, since she was left in our care. You cannot and must not turn her out. Your duty to Eva is even more sacred than your duty to a daughter!”

“Damn it!” the plantation owner exclaimed, stamping his foot. “Eva is a demon, and she’ll leave this very day!”

“But if you fear her, don’t drive her away. That would force events to a violent conclusion. Tell me frankly how the poor girl can hurt you, what reason there is in all this childish business!”

“Are you disrespecting me? I don’t need you. I know what I must do… Get out!”

“I won’t leave without repeating that I declare myself Eva’s protector, and I hope you will make no hasty decision in a situation that could compromise us both. Let Nicota’s wedding pass, and then, with the facts before you, decide what your conscience tells you to do.”

“And that brazen German woman, who lives on my money and works to ruin me? She won’t escape. She’ll be out on the street at once—at once!”

Octávio tried to lead his father toward prudence, but the comendador flung the door open noisily and went out without another word.

Madame Grüber was reading a newspaper beside the dining-room window. The mistress of the house lay curled in her hammock, rocking and sewing at the same time.

The daughters and niece had not appeared. Half a dozen little Black girls in loose baize dresses sat on the floor, joining the panels of a sheet with herringbone stitch.

The plantation owner paced agitatedly across the room several times. With an intelligent woman’s instinct, Grüber sensed that a storm was approaching and rose respectfully when she saw him coming straight toward her.

“Madam,” he said, “I need to speak to you.”

The teacher accompanied him to the room at the end of the passage, where, still standing, the comendador said:

“Let us settle accounts. I no longer need your services. Nicota is getting married, and Noemia knows too much already!”

“But… the contract…”

“The contract will be broken.”

“It’s just that…”

“Don’t worry. You’ll receive your money as though you were staying until the end of the year.”

Madame Grüber blushed, and after a brief pause said:

“Have I committed some fault? Are you dissatisfied with my services, Comendador?”

“I don’t understand books. I don’t know whether Madama has taught well or badly.”

Struggling not to answer, Grüber swallowed hard. After a pause:

“Have I had the misfortune to make myself disagreeable to your family?”

“Nothing of the kind! And I don’t want my family to know I’m dismissing you. Eva above all, do you understand? It is principally because of her,” he said emphatically, stressing the words, “that I have decided to take this step.”

“Because of her!”

“Yes! I know perfectly well that you give her advice harmful to me.”

“I?”

“So I repeat, say nothing to her. Because if she comes demanding explanations… then… then I’ll send her to the devil!”

“Rest assured,” the foreign woman said, very pale and proud. “I shall say nothing, because I don’t wish to distress that angel. For that reason alone. I leave with a clear conscience, certain that time will do me justice.”

Without seeking explanations by which to vindicate herself, she arranged to pack that day and leave for Santos at dawn the next morning. There she would receive her accumulated salary from Medeiros’s agent and sail for Hamburg on the first German packet boat.

Throughout the interview, Octávio paced anxiously in the passage, glancing from time to time at the door.

What words would his father use? On what pretext would he dismiss a respectable woman of whom Morton had said, “She is an educated and strict woman; I recommended her to them”? Why entangle Grüber’s name in the intrigue? What interest could anyone have in ruining her? What terrible document did Eva possess? Clearly his father’s sick imagination had conjured visions of absurd cruelty! There was still fever in that body, and surely it was all the delirium it produced. But the letter? Who had written it? Someone nameless, a coward, a wretch not worth a thought. Yet it was true all the same that Eva loved Azevedo, that puppet of hollow rhetoric!

And he returned to his father’s anguished words: “Eva has dangerous documents, and she can achieve anything against me!”

A ray of light struck Octávio’s mind. Perhaps his cousin had witnessed the death agony of a flogged slave… Perhaps, outraged, she had uttered a bitter remark or an angry protest…

The most honorable course would be to go to her, speak plainly, ask for explanations, and urge her to restore her uncle’s necessary peace of mind.

Resolved on this, Octávio went down to the garden, where Eva usually tended the flowers at that hour. He was not mistaken: his cousin was busy weaving jasmine stems through a trellis. Seeing her so attentive and serene amid the shower of fragrant little white stars on the climbing plant, Octávio felt remorse at the thought of disturbing her.

Besides, what right had he to demand a frank confession? How should he question her? Would she not be offended at being thought capable of denouncing the man who sheltered her, the brother of the father whose memory she so revered? Tell her of the letter they had received? That would be shameful! Warn her of the distress that threatened her? That would only bring it sooner. In the end, to confess everything would be the same as saying: I doubt you, Eva, and so, instead of trying to disarm your enemy without so much as troubling your sleep, I come wretchedly to tell you what is happening, leaving you either to depart proudly or remain humiliated!

I must also protect her without her suspecting it, Octávio reflected. I must show her the care of the friend she has lost, who entrusted her to us. I shall draw a confidence from Azevedo and help bring about the marriage soon…

It was bitterly but firmly that young Medeiros made himself this final promise. I came too late. Perhaps they have loved each other for a long time…

Eva went on weaving the jasmine stems among their little white stars, while her cousin watched from a distance, remembering what his dear Adolpho Meyer had once told him:

“When I see a woman tending flowers lovingly, I want to kiss her hands!…”

Octávio had exchanged a few words with his cousin when Noemia came running across the garden toward them.

“A letter for Eva, from Mangueiral,” she said.

Eva stepped forward, unfolded the paper without haste, and read aloud:

“Please come to Mangueiral immediately. Raymundo’s family wants to leave after a quarrel with Salomão’s. They are the best people in the settlement, and we badly need them just now.

“Your devoted brother,

“Paulo.

“P.S. Dr. Azevedo came here today and is going on this afternoon to Leocadio’s plantation. Be sure to come, won’t you?”

She had read without the slightest embarrassment. Octávio moved away silently, then turned on hearing Eva say:

“Would your teacher be willing to come with me?”

“I haven’t had my lesson yet… But if only I could go too!”

Wishing to divert them from the idea of inviting Grüber, Octávio offered his own company and his sister’s, looking steadily at Eva, whom he expected to seem displeased. But no! She smiled and accepted the suggestion gladly.

“Shall we ride? I’d rather go on horseback,” Noemia confessed.

“But will Uncle Medeiros allow it?…” Eva asked.

“Allow us to ride?”

“No! Allow you to come with me to Mangueiral… I’ve always gone only with…”

“Oh,” Noemia interrupted, “Octávio has already said I can go too, and Father never objects as long as there’s a man along!”

By the time they went upstairs, Octávio had already told his father what had happened. Contrary to his expectation, the plantation owner approved of his children’s visit to Mangueiral, which he regarded as a chance to spy. He merely suggested that Nicota should go instead of Noemia. His elder daughter had more judgment and gave more useful accounts of things.

“As you wish,” Octávio answered.

The plantation owner made his decision known. Noemia, who had been so excited, cried when told that instead of going for her first long ride she must remain shut up in that accursed great house. A little later she was consoled to learn that Nicota had spent a sleepless night with earache and would not get out of bed all day.

Without thinking, she clapped her hands and gave little jumps that set Júpiter and Vinagre capering. Her eyes scarcely dry but her face radiant, she went to her room to get ready. It was nine o’clock when they left. Breakfast remained on the table: the bean viradinho,^7-1 pork loin, greens, paçoca,^7-2 and eggs. They would eat at Mangueiral two and a half hours later. Only the comendador and his wife sat down at table. The teacher had a headache, and when she said goodbye to Eva with “Until this evening,” she embraced her tenderly.

The road from Santa Genoveva to Mangueiral was beautiful, newly opened through virgin forest and full of coolness and shade.

Now and then there was a field to cross, flooded with light and heat; then once again the road, sheltered by the trees along its edges.

Noemia rode ahead, frightening the birds with her cries, speeding up and slowing down her mount with reckless boldness. They warned her of the danger in vain. Beside his cousin, Octávio listened as she spoke affectionately of the person who had called her his sister in the letter.

“He’s my parents’ adopted son,” she said, “an orphan from a very early age. We grew up together, had the same teachers, and were always very close… Paulo is intelligent and modest. My father, as you naturally know already, Cousin Octávio, left him in charge of Mangueiral. Uncle Medeiros was the one who received a troublesome legacy, having to give me his care and protection.”

Octávio shuddered at Eva’s last words.

Medeiros’s protection and care for his ward were, unhappily, a mockery.

What a terrible legacy, so heavy with responsibilities! And what a beautiful reconciliation the dying man had proposed! How good and trusting that man must have been to point with a trembling hand, before closing his eyes forever, toward an enemy’s house as his only daughter’s sole refuge in orphanhood and the sole consolation for her tears!

What a generous soul that defeated worker had possessed! After struggling and suffering rivalries, envy, and perhaps injustice, he had still, old and nearing the moment of putting on his shroud, retained the innocent faith of a child!

He had imagined his orphan surrounded by affection, among young people her own age who would cherish her and give her the sweet name of sister… He had seen a vision, dreamed one last golden dream, beautiful and possible, but unhappily unfulfilled!

Octávio exchanged a few more words with his cousin before they reached Mangueiral.

Eva went ahead to show the way.

They followed a broad avenue of bamboo and emerged into a delightful, shady park of moss, water, and grass, over which the mango trees extended their arms in a voluptuous stretch.

At the far end, clothed in creeping greenery, the house had a cheerful appearance quite unlike the usual dwellings of the São Paulo countryside. It did not expose the harsh nakedness of white walls to the four winds as the others did. It had nestled among flowers and surrounded itself with trees, narrowing its horizon and making its setting more intimate. No dirty children played outside, nor did dogs lie asleep in the sun covered with mosquitoes. There was the murmur of foliage and the slow flow of water into a stone basin. Through windows closed against the heat came the sound of a cello.

Octávio felt he was looking at an English cottage, elegant and discreet.

“Paulo is practicing. He doesn’t expect me so soon!” Eva said.

She tapped on the windowpane with her little riding whip.

With an exclamation of pleasure, Paulo came to the door, accompanied by a broadly smiling Azevedo.

After introductions and the first greetings, they went to the music room.

Paulo acted as host. He was a likable young man without being handsome: dark-complexioned, black-eyed, tall and thin, with a wide mouth shaded by a small black mustache and a masculine voice, strong yet gentle.

Azevedo drew near Noemia and Eva, making gallant speeches.

“Listen, Paulo,” the mistress of the house interrupted with a smile, “we haven’t had breakfast yet!”

“Really?” Paulo was about to rise when Eva stopped him with a gesture and went into the interior of the house herself. Noemia followed, too shy to remain there without her.

The young men began a lively conversation. Octávio listened with pleasure to Paulo’s fluent, sensible words. He expressed ideas entirely in accord with Octávio’s own, revealing judgment, energy, and a thorough knowledge of agriculture, which he loved passionately.

Azevedo disputed the notion that farming deserved enthusiasm. “It may be the most profitable occupation,” he said, “but for that very reason it does not merit the worship of superior minds.”

Paulo maintained the opposite: no profession was more beautiful than the farmer’s. It was true that it had been poorly understood until then, but a day would come when the rotten old routine would collapse and the transformation of labor would raise it to its rightful height.

Octávio supported him, and the discussion continued animatedly. Then Azevedo began a conversation whose subject seemed to interest Paulo keenly, while Octávio Medeiros, observing everything around him, compared Eva’s plantation with the comendador’s.

Everything here was different; everything had an original and cheerful character. The wicker furniture with its light-colored backs, artistically arranged; the divan upholstered in linen with bright foliage, in a corner beside a cork plant stand whose three tiers were hidden by graceful maidenhair fronds and lacy ferns; the upright piano covered in gray cashmere with silk appliqué; the cello beside it, near a mosaic music stand and a vase of fresh roses; the solid round table bearing music journals and portraits of famous composers; the translucent curtains edged in shaded embroidery—all these things revealed that the hand which had arranged them possessed an artistic sense so rare in the province.

Octávio admired first the freshness of a watercolor in which a spotted cow trailed a thread of drool above the tender green of a new pasture, then the rugs embroidered with fanciful Chinese designs. He forgot his father’s apprehensions and reflected on the happiness of anyone who could enjoy the sweetness of family life in that house…

He soon turned his attention back to the conversation.

Speaking of the slaveholders, Azevedo was exclaiming:

“Damn it! They give me no end of trouble sometimes. Just listen: the other day one of Antunes’s slaves came to my house, still a strong man, cut up by the lash and with irons around his neck. Do you know Antunes, Paulo?”

“Antunes?”

“Yes.”

“Only by sight. I’ve never had dealings with him.”

“Well, so much the better! As I was saying, the man appeared complaining of ill-treatment and exposing his wasted, lacerated body to my compassion. I had his irons removed and his wounds treated; I gave him a bed and dinner. Since seven hundred mil-réis remained from Mr. Gabriel’s bequest, I wrote to Antunes offering that sum for the slave’s freedom. He answered with a furious tirade, demanding that I hand the man over. ‘I wouldn’t sell him for a conto,’ he said in the letter. ‘I’ll teach him a lesson!’

“I questioned the man: he was African. I was overjoyed. The law was on my side. Without further fuss, I freed the poor wretch, putting into his hand a copy of the law of 1831 that prohibited the African slave trade. The seven hundred mil-réis can wait for some other slave unfortunate enough to have been born in Brazil.”

“And Antunes?” Paulo asked absently. “Sent you more threats, of course…”

“Naturally! I expected that. The devil of a man wanted to prosecute me and even went so far as to discuss it! A waste of effort. The lawyer advised him to put his fiddle back in its bag, which, from what I hear, he refuses to accept. He is trying every means of harming me, and since he has influential friends, perhaps he will succeed. I’ve never made a display of being an abolitionist. True, I have freed half a dozen slaves, always with their owners’ agreement and in my capacity as executor. I avoid expressing my opinions on such matters as far as I can. This is the first unpleasantness I’ve had here…”

“And Eva,” Paulo asked, “does she know about it?”

“Certainly. I went to dinner at Santa Genoveva one day, told her what had happened, and asked her opinion as the donor’s daughter. She approved of my idea and promised to write the next day, sending a certain sum to free any other slave who might ask for my help. Fortunately, no more have appeared… Your sister,” Azevedo continued awkwardly, addressing Paulo, “expressed the intention of giving a sum every year for the same purpose…”

“She has already spoken to me about it.”

“And you didn’t try to dissuade her?”

“No. She has every right to do it. She gives what she can spare. Eva lives simply and spends little on herself. What I did dissuade her from was entrusting the task to you. She hadn’t considered that, in the society we live in, it might do you harm.”

Azevedo could not conceal a movement of relief. Paulo continued:

“From now on I’ll take responsibility for carrying out that work.”

They then told Octávio that his late uncle, Gabriel Medeiros, had been a man of heart and fortune, intelligent and active, who had studied agriculture lovingly and devoted himself to it exclusively.

“Had he followed the old routine,” said Mangueiral’s manager, “he would have left a greater fortune. Unfortunately, the first to revolutionize a system entrenched for years do not reap great rewards. Those most advanced in theory always achieve the fewest practical results. However that may be, the fact is that he left a fine will.”

“Which I haven’t read,” Octávio put in.

“Really? I have a copy here and will give it to you to read. Besides some individual charitable gifts, he left ten contos for manumissions, and that was the bequest Dr. Azevedo referred to just now.”

“Did he have no slaves?” Octávio asked.

“No. He adopted the system of settler labor. At first he suffered heavy losses and even fell into debt, but he was persistent and did not lose heart. Within a few years he recovered what he had lost.”

In a small square room with glass doors opening onto the garden, Noemia and Eva waited for Paulo and the guests. Through the open window, framed by delicate little roses, came the fragrance of flowers and the cheerful chirping of birds in a nearby aviary. The elegantly laid table awakened the appetite.

The crystal decanters of wine; the pineapple cut in a spiral, exposing its golden, juicy flesh; the dark wooden fruit bowl from Caldas in Minas, with peaches and grapes nestled in fresh moss, still fragrant and damp; the little dish of olives and salami; the homemade fresh cheese; the coconut-shell meal bowl carved in relief in Bahia; the fresh butter, also made at Mangueiral; and the earthenware jugs full of creamy milk gave that country table a cheerful, inviting look, all the more so as the clock already showed noon.

Once they were seated, the conversation took various turns, its subject changing from moment to moment.

After breakfast Azevedo left, professing his regret at having to quit that delightful retreat and go to Leocadio’s plantation on business for some orphaned girls, still minors, whom he did not know. He would be scorched by the heat of the open country, only to linger in a house of unbelievable barrenness whose owner, a man of São Paulo impervious to civilization, received visitors in shirtsleeves, slippers, and a hat pulled down to his ears.

Paulo and Octávio set off on foot to visit and inspect the settlement. Noemia and Eva stayed to wait for Raymundo. He did not keep them waiting, coming at the first summons. He was a tall man with a red beard, blue eyes, and a weather-beaten face, speaking in a heavy Minho accent studded with diminutives.

Eva avoided becoming involved in the management of Mangueiral, consenting now and then only at Paulo’s urging. Never, however, had she been called for so slight a reason. When she expressed her surprise, Paulo answered with a smile:

“It’s because I missed you so much… Still, Eva, do advise Raymundo and the other man, as if it were your own idea, without letting them suspect I had anything to do with it.”

Raymundo came in awkwardly and answered Eva’s questions with a stammer, struggling to find his words. Encouraged by the attention with which he was heard, he at last continued without interruption:

“It’s that… ma’am… Samuel tried to beat my little girl… You know she’s crippled and frail… Well then, I lost my head and wanted to finish him off, that’s the truth! The poor little soul was so terrified she didn’t seem to have a drop of blood left in her! No, something like that!… Even today, the little angel only has to see—forgive the expression—that devil of an old man, and she turns to wax, like a little saint!”

The poor fellow was afraid of being dismissed. Settlers’ work was hard and poorly paid on all the other plantations. Only here had he found certain advantages that allowed him to live plentifully and still put aside a little money every year. He knew the worth of his sturdy peasant’s arm and did not want to be exploited. From the effort he spent digging the earth, he saw hopes of future rest springing up. Before entering Mangueiral’s service he had worked for large landowners, enduring insults from brutish overseers. At last he had found a model plantation and was happy.

Eva showed him that he had been rash and that, unless he curbed his temper, he might one day get himself into serious trouble. She would plead his cause if she saw him make peace with Samuel. “I don’t want two people who hate each other on my property,” she concluded.

The settler went out with his head bowed, and Samuel was summoned.

He was a short, fat old man with straight white hair, whom Eva had been accustomed since childhood to call Uncle Samuel. She felt a certain respect for him that kept her from openly scolding him. She gave him a glass of wine, which he drained, asked him to sit down, and said:

“What was all this, then? Uncle Samuel tried to beat a child?”

“Because if her father doesn’t know how to bring her up, a stranger has to step in! And I’ll thrash her if she pulls faces at me again!”

“Don’t say that. When a child behaves badly toward you, complain to the parents or to Mr. Paulo. I don’t want good Uncle Samuel to be the bogeyman to the little angels. And now, come, admit that if you saw Raymundo’s little girl here, you’d give her a kiss…”

But Uncle Samuel was hard to persuade. Obstinate, he grew red and shouted against Raymundo, Raymundo’s wife, Raymundo’s daughter, Raymundo’s poultry, which flew into his vegetable garden, and even Raymundo’s dog, a devilish little terrier that had already torn the skirts of one of his coats!

Eva knew Raymundo was eager to move into a new house, much larger than his present one, beside the river, where his wife could go more easily to do the washing. She promised Samuel to free him from his rival’s neighborhood, on condition that she saw them on friendly terms that very day. Samuel considered it… But at last he declared roughly that he would not take a single step toward it, and went out without hearing anything more.

He walked away angry, muttering under his breath. Halfway along he met Raymundo’s daughter. The little girl, very pale and rickety, was gathering Surinam cherries that the wind had scattered on the ground. Seeing Uncle Samuel, she rose in fright, dropped the fruit she had collected in her skirt, which she had gathered into a pouch, and after hesitating a moment, ran off limping in great distress.

Samuel shouted after her:

“Don’t be silly! I won’t hurt you!”

Hearing the voice without understanding the words, the poor little thing fell and struck her head on the stone rim of a water tank. Samuel, who had smiled at the girl’s first movement, was deeply distressed to see her fall and hurried to help. She had fainted, with a gash in her forehead, and was covered in blood. The old man took her in his arms and carried her to Raymundo’s house. The girl’s mother shouted at the accursed old man. In her eyes, he had beaten the child, wounded her, killed her! She struck him with a vigorous, furious blow. Samuel had expected exactly this and let himself be insulted. Only after the child recovered from her faint was the truth known. Samuel kissed her, gave her money for sweets, and made funny faces until she laughed. And so peace was made.

As he toured the settlement with Paulo, Octávio pitied his cousin more than ever. Though she possessed such a charming home, poor Eva lived at that sad plantation of Santa Genoveva, with comfort for neither mind nor body, threatened by distress and disliked without even knowing it.

When they left Mangueiral, Paulo accompanied them halfway. Then the three rode on silently, feeling the enchantment of that day full of memories coming to an end.

Octávio thought of his uncle’s will, the fine system he had established, Eva’s kindness, and Paulo’s courtesy. Eva recalled her childhood. Noemia pondered everything: the climbing plants clothing the house’s outer walls, the sound of the cello, the pictures, the furnishings, appropriate and distinctive in every room, the settlers’ houses with new roofs and open windows, the flowers, the fair-haired children, the little mango-tree park, Paulo—everything.

She had never imagined that a plantation could possess so much elegance and charm!

When they reached Santa Genoveva it was the hour of the Angelus. Shadows were falling, and the bell’s vibrations faded through the air, calling the enslaved workers to roll call. Against the hazy sky stood the ranks of sweating Black people, aching with exhaustion, bundles of firewood and hoes on their shoulders, silent and sad. They lined up before their master’s house. As Octávio and the two horsewomen approached, they heard, like the murmur of a sorrowful wave, the greeting “Praised be Christ!” murmured at once by a hundred voices, and the thud of firewood falling in a burden to the ground.

It was already night when Eva entered the teacher’s room and found her packing her many books and few clothes into a large gray trunk.

“What’s all this upheaval?” her pupil asked, unsuspecting.

“I leave tomorrow.”

“For where?”

“Europe.”

At Eva’s gesture of astonishment, the German woman drew a blue armchair toward the table and made her sit down. Then, resting her slender, nervous hands on the table, she gazed long and silently at the orphan’s face.

“Yes,” she went on. “Duty obliges me to leave tomorrow… If it were possible, I would leave today…”

“Duty! But what duty makes you leave us so suddenly?”

“It is right that I should go to my mother,” the poor woman murmured, as if speaking to herself.

“Have you had a letter asking you to come?”

Madame Grüber answered with some embarrassment:

“Yes…”

“Then you’re quite right to go at once. I’ll pray to God for her and for you…”

The German woman returned to her packing, and Eva’s eyes filled with tears.

How would she spend her evenings now? The teacher was her refuge. In her company the hours passed quickly; in those intimate evenings Eva learned with pleasure to sustain useful, unpretentious conversations. Her embroidery, books, and drawings would seem dull and difficult without her friend’s advice and influence, without the support of a superior intelligence. She respected her, and in moments of discouragement, weary of that gloomy house where she was condemned to live, of the family company she tried in vain to find agreeable, it had always been the foreign woman’s saving arm that impelled her toward work as the only true consolation and the only fruitful diversion.

Amid these reflections, Eva helped fold the dresses and put away the objects scattered over the bed, the chairs, and the chest of drawers. When the work was finished, they leaned at the window, looking silently into the darkness.

“What time do you leave?” Eva said at last.

“At nine. Come to my room at eight so we can say goodbye. Don’t stay here any longer. Go and rest.”

As she crossed the passage on her way to her room, Eva heard her uncle arguing loudly with his son in the room at the far end. Thinking of Noemia’s governess, she paid no attention to what they were saying.

Octávio was struggling to convince his father of his cousin’s innocence and the purity of her intentions. He described what he had seen with enthusiasm, praised the system followed at Mangueiral, emphasized Paulo’s sound management, and applauded with all his heart that generous and truly modern family.

The plantation owner grew impatient. Nothing could compare with slave labor. “If Gabriel made twenty contos in a year, I made forty. There you have it! And I don’t care about it! Let everyone break his own head as he pleases!”

Octávio spoke of abolition’s imminent arrival. The plantation owner laughed, insisting that the longed-for deliverance of the captives was still far off. “Let the newspapers shout!” he concluded.

They returned to Eva. Octávio tried to demonstrate her goodness and her innocence of the wrong attributed to her. Then he asked about the foreign woman.

The comendador curtly told him what had happened. Displeased with his son, whom he saw rebelling against his ideas and decisions, he had resolved never again to confide in him about the plantation or even the family. Nevertheless, he let slip his desire to marry Eva off as soon as possible—to Azevedo, to Paulo, or to the devil!

Octávio replied that she was not a woman who would consent to marry someone else’s choice. But it was likely that she loved one of the two people mentioned, and in that case he welcomed his father’s intervention.

Leaving the comendador, he reflected sadly on his own last words. Eva marry Azevedo! What folly! But had he not already considered it and resolved to help them? Yes, because at that time he had supposed they loved each other. Now that the magistrate had enlightened him with the story of the letter, it seemed absurd. Eva deserved an exceptional man… and he thought Azevedo mediocre!…

Eva marry Paulo! What an outlandish idea! Yet, after all, it was perfectly possible. Were they children of the same parents? Raised together almost from the cradle, loving the same places and people, bound by the same education, the same events, the same past, it was entirely natural that they should love each other and wish to continue sharing their lives. It was a logical outcome… perhaps expected by Eva’s parents when they trained Paulo to manage the estate, raised his mind to a higher level, and formed his heart so well! Just then he saw a light in the foreign woman’s room. The door was ajar, and she sat writing opposite it. Octávio greeted her and asked for the honor of a word with her. Grüber rose and came to the door.

Octávio began:

“I deeply regret your departure, madam, and ask you to call upon me as you would a brother or a son.”

“Thank you. I’m accustomed to facing every difficulty alone, and even if I weren’t, I would not wish to trouble you, especially as your father would take it badly.”

“My father is the victim of a malicious anonymous writer cunning enough to lead him astray. If he is not a gentleman in his social manner, he is an honest man, ready to retract when he recognizes his error. If today he has been rash and rude, thoughtlessly allowing himself to be carried away by an intrigue, tomorrow he will be reasonable, kind, and humble. Everything depends on his knowing the whole truth. Perhaps you did not try to enlighten him.”

“Nor shall I ever try. My position is delicate and now incompatible with his. Let us be brief: I thank you for your offer, but I must not and will not accept it. I leave for Santos at dawn. We shall probably never meet again, but be assured that wherever fate may cast me, you will have a friend there.”

Octávio bowed respectfully. The German woman held out her hand, which he kissed, and they parted. He went to his room; she returned to her desk and resumed writing.

The next day, when Eva opened her eyes, sunshine poured through the window in a joyful abundance of warmth and light. It was nearly seven. She dressed hastily and went to the teacher’s room. She knocked, received no answer, and entered.

Madame Grüber was not there. The large gray trunk had vanished too. Eva ran to the window. No carriage remained, only two deep parallel wheel tracks leading toward the road. She drew back the bed curtain. The bed was still made, its coverlet somewhat crumpled and a small hollow in the pillow where a head had rested. Why had Helena Grüber not lain between the cool sheets? Near the open window stood the blue armchair patterned with foliage. Had the foreign woman spent part of the night looking at the bright stars of the American sky?

The metal pail contained the ashes of burned papers, blackening its sides. On the washstand the basin was still full of water, and a glass held a little mouthwash. Open, empty drawers showed their pale pine bottoms. On the floor in one corner lay old ribbons, torn cardboard boxes, and a worn collar mixed with cloth daisies. On the round table stood the white porcelain inkwell and a bone penholder carelessly dropped on the black-and-blue flannel cloth. At the far end, on the chest of drawers, were a bronze bust of Goethe and a letter on which Grüber’s fine little handwriting had traced the words:

“For Eva.”

Eva opened the envelope and, sitting on the edge of the bed, read:

“My dear girl—In the silence and peace of the night I take this opportunity to say goodbye. I lied to you, Eva. For the first time I lied, telling you I would see you at eight when I already intended to leave at dawn! I, who have always been so courageous, lack the courage for this last embrace!

“Women of my profession are generally credited with the deepest indifference toward the people in whose homes they live for a time, whose secrets they often discover and whose virtues or faults they cannot fail to know. The teacher accompanies and guides her pupil, seeing only material profit in it. Money binds her to the foreign family, to whom, from the outset and by calculation, she attaches herself as little as possible to avoid the chance of future grief… All the affection and tenderness in her soul are transformed by exile, by separation from her family, by the harsh condition of paid service to which she must submit, into a consuming, feverish thirst for the gold with which she hopes soon to buy her freedom. Then she sees, thinks, and dreams of nothing but her future in her homeland, letting lamentations and joys pass beside her without seeming to notice! You will not do me the injustice, Eva, of believing me like that. I do not leave because I have secured my independence. I leave because I must. My mother is old; it is right that she should stretch her arms toward me, who am properly her only support. Yet let me say that I do not consider myself superior to foreign teachers in general.

“I came resolved to do the same, and I would leave with dry eyes were I not leaving you, my daughter—allow me that name, which I feel rising spontaneously from my soul—had I not found in you such a union of goodness, intelligence, and diligence: a beautiful soul, in short. It is not only the teacher who forms the pupil, as you see. Often the pupil’s sweetness overcomes every resolution, however firm, however harsh.

“Believe me, of all my memories, the dearest will always be those hours when I saw and heard you in your home, always considerate and distinguished. Remain that way all your life, good and calm, and you will triumph over any harm intended against you, although in the perversity of the world the trusting and good are not always the happiest! You do not understand me now, Eva. You will understand later, when age has brought you experience of this so aptly named vale of tears! Continue to study. Read carefully. A good book is as wholesome for the soul as a bath can be for the body! Always avoid the philosophical theories and pessimistic expositions of minds sick with ideals. Do not allow yourself, like so many intelligent women of our time and your education, to become caught up in the lofty subjects of social doctrines. Leave such arguments to the competence and experience of men. Your contribution would certainly not shake the established laws and, worse still, would compromise your private life!

“A woman making dogmatic assertions is ridiculous in other people’s eyes and unhappy in her own.

“So gather from your reading only the flowers and fruits that seem wholesome and sweet. With these you will nourish your mind fruitfully and make your future home attractive. Go on tending your garden and beautifully worshipping your flowers. Contemplate the stars, as you used to—what harm is there in that? Let those unhappy people criticize you who can no longer take pleasure in the rapt observation of nature! They do not know that she is the best of books and the purest of teachers! Make music and draw. Whisper your joys or sorrows to art; she will be the sweetest of friends, or at least the most consoling. Nature and Art are the two beautiful temples where at any time we can find a safe refuge for our spirits. Do not forget this. I repeat, my dear: try to read good books. I recommend no particular school. All are good when handled by a writer of talent and conviction; all are useful when read by someone with your judgment. Sew, work, walk, give the birds the motherly care you show so well, and write now and then to your old friend.

“As a remembrance of our conversations and evenings together, I leave you the bust of the poet whose works we so often translated together. Yours devotedly,

“Helena Grüber.”

Comendador Medeiros’s family accepted every decision made by its head without discussion or disturbance. The news of the governess’s departure caused no alarm. Nicota, on the eve of her wedding, seemed entirely unconcerned and remained as cold and withdrawn as ever, carefully tending her almost vanished earache. Noemia felt glad and sad at once. She was free of lessons, of so many hours of confinement and boredom; she experienced a sense of relief, a pleasure of indefinable sweetness, certainly. At the same time, however, she thought that she would never again see that intelligent woman of saintly patience, who would suffer… perhaps die crossing the seas!…

Her mother worked, making sweets from morning until night for her daughter’s wedding, deciding what sewing was needed, scrupulously inspecting the trousseau, and urging care, the utmost care, upon the washerwomen and ironers, who sang as they worked. Her opinion had never been sought or heard on matters of any other importance. She managed the household, and that was enough for her. She had married at thirteen, without love or affection, but without repugnance either.

She had submitted to her husband’s will and authority, at first from fear, later from habit. Kind by nature, she never complained. She readily excused other people’s faults but pleaded no one’s cause before her husband, however just, because he grew angry and she feared him. She accepted facts as they were forced upon her without making the slightest effort to examine what lay beneath them; and so, mindlessly, she let every domestic event pass before her as though she did not see it. Of twelve children, three remained. The successive deaths of the older ones, all already raised, two already men, had completed in her suffering soul an indifference to every passion, diminished beside the immense weight of those intense sorrows.

Her husband never spoke to her of business. He disposed of everything freely and, as though he feared indiscretion, avoided telling her even of his suspicions concerning Eva.

The reason for the teacher’s departure therefore remained unknown to most of the family.

Determined to protect his cousin at all costs against the plantation owner’s malicious intentions, lost in painful conjectures prompted by his father’s inexplicable hostility toward the poor girl, Octávio decided to go that very day to old Morton’s house and ask for the explanation Comendador Medeiros stubbornly refused him. Leaving his room for the yard, where his horse stood ready, he saw Eva in the sewing room fastening white ribbon bows to the bride’s fine linen.

She had not noticed him. Approaching to say goodbye, he sat beside her and offered commonplace praise for the patience and taste with which she was adorning his sister. Then he asked her to begin holding musical evenings and to help him read his books. The nights at Santa Genoveva were endless, dreadful! “Now that Madame Grüber is no longer with us,” he concluded, “spare us a little of your attention.”

Without stopping her work, Eva promised to do as he wished.

Noemia interrupted them, full of complaints. She did not know what to do! She was sleepy! What a long, tedious morning! Eva explained:

“You miss your teacher. Come and work with me… Here, help me sew on this lace.”

Octávio left them at their task. Meanwhile Noemia described her morning. Such boredom! The hours dragged like tottering old women! The heat was more intense. She had tried sleeping but got up quickly, ashamed to lie down at that hour. She had wandered all over the house, read and abandoned her book, played music and grown tired of it! She blessed Eva for understanding her ailment.

Eva, whose energy never diminished, outlined a program that included studying languages and music, tending flowers, and raising birds. In the country especially, she suggested, one had to struggle against nature and resist the melancholy and indolence that the stillness of the fields so often produced.

Meanwhile, under the beating sun, Octávio galloped along the road to Morton’s house.

While waiting for his old friend, who was enjoying his afternoon sleep, he sat between a bookcase full of books and a table covered with papers. On the white wall above the desk, a calendar page fluttered briskly in the breeze from the window, marking December 10, 1887. Higher up, an oleograph displayed the great American city of New York, in Morton’s homeland, against a very blue, varnished background of sea and sky. An issue of the New York Herald lay on the old tiger skin spread beside the sofa, where it had slipped from its drowsy reader’s hands an hour before. Octávio picked it up and began reading mechanically. He had been there a good half hour when Dr. Morton appeared, smiling, in slippers and a linen coat.

“Can you spare me your day, doctor, or have you some engagement?”

“None… My only work now is two hours of teaching at the school over there. I haven’t the strength for more. I’m worn out.”

“Good! In that case, may we talk?”

“Certainly. But let me send for some beer first. It’s damned hot!”

The doctor called to a freckled white maid in a blue striped apron who was passing along the corridor and told her to bring beer and glasses. A moment later, savoring what he considered the best and healthiest of drinks, he signaled to his former pupil to begin.

“I’m ready to listen.”

“I hope you’ll be even more ready to speak,” Octávio answered. Drawing closer to the old man, he continued:

“However strange my request may seem, I beg you to believe that my motives are disinterested and sincere. As you know, I went to Europe very young, knowing little about family matters, even the most intimate ones. I knew my father had a younger brother, Gabriel, whom I had never seen with him and rarely heard mentioned. What this brother of my father’s did, and where he lived, mattered little to me; I always had other things to think about. They told me he was ungrateful, frivolous, and without affection for his family. As a child I was forbidden to repeat his name if I happened to hear it, and perhaps that was where my indifference began. Yet on returning from Europe after ten years, I find a daughter of this man in our house. I asked how she had come to be admitted, how and why peace had been made, and was told: ‘Dr. Morton was the one who intervened; he can explain everything better than anyone.’ That, my dear friend, is why I have come knocking at your door!”

“And your father?”

“My father?!”

“Yes. Why didn’t you go to him first?”

“I was afraid of recalling painful scenes…” Octávio answered awkwardly.

“You were right. And… well, as a mere spectator, I am more impartial.”

Refilling his glass, Dr. Morton began, in his marked English accent, a long story interrupted now and then by brief remarks from Octávio.

One afternoon many years before, Gabriel Medeiros had visited him to ask him to teach his only daughter, Eva, and a godson, Paulo. Morton had accepted the position, and two days later set out in a carriage for Mangueiral, the name of the plantation…

“I know,” Octávio interrupted. “I’ve been there.”

“Ah, you have?” After a few remarks about the place, the old man resumed his narrative.

On arriving at Mangueiral, he had been introduced to the mistress of the house, a most gracious and distinguished woman from Rio, full of consideration and delicacy. Eva had offered him her rosy little face and thrown her round little arms about him; Paulo, thin and pale, had listened closely to his words, and so the first lesson had passed pleasantly. From that day he had gone to Mangueiral three times a week, gradually becoming like one of the family.

Gabriel Medeiros was an enterprising, daring man; his wife, a saint; Eva, obedient and, if not exceptionally gifted, studious and energetic; Paulo…

“I know him too…” Octávio put in.

“An excellent young man!” the foreigner declared, pausing for a few mouthfuls of beer. Then, in the same tone, he went on to say that after two years of lessons he, Morton, had fallen gravely ill with a pernicious fever. The doctors advised a change of air, and good Gabriel Medeiros took him to Mangueiral. He had spent a delightful month there, surrounded by affection as though he truly belonged to the family. It was then that one day, while the children played in the garden and the mistress of the house sewed in another room, Gabriel Medeiros, standing at his study window and watching his daughter in the distance, had told him his whole life with an adorable lack of pretension.

Never had he received so touching a proof of friendship and trust.

Octávio listened with redoubled attention, his handsome brown eyes fixed without blinking on the old man’s pale, softened face.

“Your grandfather,” Morton said, “was an ambitious man and… well, let us say…”

“Ignorant,” Octávio supplied.

“That’s the word.”

With the last mouthful of beer swallowed, the narrative continued without the slightest pause.

Octávio’s grandfather had married off his daughters and sons without consulting their wishes at all. At fifteen, the girls had husbands he had handpicked.

He spared the boys the trouble of choosing too. He calculated fortunes, arranged the affair, and there! All he had to tell his son was: “So-and-so will suit you. I’ve spoken to her father and it’s all settled.” Gabriel Medeiros was the youngest, and while the heiress of the richest man in the municipality was growing up, he sent him to study in São Paulo. The girl developed and, since she was not ugly—or, to put it better, since she had a fortune—suitors rained down upon her. But the business had already been settled between the fathers; and though neither Gabriel nor the young woman knew it, the fact was that they were engaged! Seeing his future daughter-in-law in long dresses, old Medeiros wrote to his son, ordering him to leave his studies and come home. But Gabriel had developed a taste for the whole business and completed his second-year examinations. He begged his father to let him stay, speaking of future honors and his professors’ praise. What father could fail to smile at the thought of a son with a degree!

Permission was granted after the bride’s family had been asked to postpone the wedding, which they reluctantly agreed to do.

At that time Comendador Medeiros, Octávio’s father, was already married and responsible for a substantial household. Having suffered a severe setback from successive frosts, he appealed to his brother’s future father-in-law, who promptly and graciously opened his purse… at the customary high rate of interest.

Many months passed. The discouraged suitors gradually abandoned the field, and the girl’s father pressed for the agreed marriage to take place soon.

Old Medeiros summoned his son Gabriel to the plantation and announced that he had decided to marry him that very month, leaving him free afterward to continue his studies. Astonished, Gabriel calmly said that he had already made his choice and pledged his heart. Disappointed, his father tried to persuade him that he must marry the other girl, reminding him of the longstanding commitment. Every plea was in vain. Gabriel continued to refuse, and the marriage was called off, to the great resentment of the bride’s father.

The student returned to São Paulo with his mother’s support. She sent his monthly allowance, saying she did so without her husband’s knowledge. A few months later the old man died of an aneurysm. His illness and death were attributed to the grief caused by Gabriel’s refusal: a complete mistake, for he had suffered for years. Distraught at such a tremendous blow, and pressed by his creditor, who threatened to seize his property, Comendador Medeiros became frantic with rage against his brother and swore to avenge his father’s death and his own dishonor. He went to São Paulo, where he easily discovered who had won Gabriel’s heart. She was the only daughter of a poor journalist who had arrived from Rio three years before. And…

Here old Morton stopped. He flushed, wiping away the sweat that drenched him, passing his handkerchief repeatedly across his forehead.

“And?…” Octávio asked, almost choked with anguish.

“And the journalist received a letter telling him that unless he wished to be shot the following night, he must leave that very day with his daughter for Rio, or farther still. The journalist shrugged and, with a clear conscience, stayed where he was. The following night, as he was returning from the newspaper office and turning a corner, he was shot and killed instantly.”

Octávio shuddered and, pale, swayed in his chair.

The doctor continued:

“The crime was attributed to politics. Such things were common in São Paulo in those days. Seeing the orphaned girl without support, Gabriel married her. Shortly afterward, while putting his father-in-law’s papers in order, he came upon the accursed letter and recognized his brother’s handwriting. He wept like a child, but shaking off the profound despair into which he had sunk, he went to see his brother. The comendador admitted that the letter was his, but denied the crime. Some fatal coincidence had guided the murderer that very night, or someone had spied upon him and, to ruin him, carried out what he had intended as no more than a threat. Convinced of his brother’s innocence, Gabriel returned more at peace and confidently extended his loyal hand to the dead man’s daughter.

“Who murdered the journalist? No one ever knew! Gabriel Medeiros withdrew with his wife to Rio, returning to São Paulo when, on his mother’s death, Mangueiral fell to him in the division of her estate. At that time his brothers brought a lawsuit against him over some land. Gabriel defeated them. From then on they neither spoke nor met. His married sisters went their separate ways: Dona Clara to Ribeirão Preto, Dona Euphrosina to Paraná. Two brothers died, and the only one left, the comendador, avoided him. Distressed by all these family events, he devoted himself body and soul to farming. He began by freeing the slaves, engaged settlers, introduced a new system, reduced his fortune by half, struggled, but little by little restored balance to his affairs. A man of heart, he adored his family and held his home in true reverence.

“He himself laid out the garden, fitted the walls with trellises so that the ivy could climb freely, and decorated the interior of the house. In his spare hours he built the elegant aviaries still standing in the grounds, fanciful and sturdy.”

After describing the death of Eva’s mother when the girl was ten, and speaking of Gabriel’s love, now turned entirely toward his daughter, Dr. Morton related his feelings on a day of heavy rain when he had been urgently summoned to Mangueiral. Gabriel Medeiros had suffered an attack of pulmonary congestion.

He found him in bed, surrounded by medicines, his face gaunt, his white hair matted with sweat, and a strong smell of fever and blood coming from his broad, purplish mouth, from which nothing had ever issued but words of gentleness and forgiveness.

Morton tried to encourage him, struggling to steady his voice. The sick man smiled sadly and, holding out his hot, dry hand, said:

“Listen. I don’t want to leave my Eva alone in this house with Paulo, who is no relation to her. She has no fiancé, no women friends… I thought of my brother. He is the only member of the family I have left. I want to be reconciled… He has daughters. He will be merciful to mine!”

“I went immediately to find the comendador,” Morton concluded, “and, to his credit, as soon as he heard me he hurried to accompany me. We galloped to Mangueiral. When we arrived, Eva was sobbing. Gabriel Medeiros was dead!”

Motionless, all his life concentrated in his gaze, Octávio listened to the slow voice of that terrible man who was painfully tearing his heart apart. Morton continued the story. After the will had been read, between the dead man’s insensible, livid body and the orphan’s heaving breast, Comendador Medeiros had tried to take possession of his brother’s papers, which Eva vigorously resisted.

In her despair the unhappy girl wanted to preserve everything as her father had left it. Her uncle, however, had misinterpreted her impulse. He supposed his niece wished to keep, for future revenge, the threatening letter he had written to the murdered journalist. There was no other evidence of that crime. The comendador’s wish to make it disappear was understandable. Who could assure him that he would not one day be accused? If his declarations of innocence had satisfied his brother Gabriel, would they satisfy society and the courts? No! In the eyes of society and the courts, the journalist’s murderer would inevitably be the man who had written the threat: Comendador Medeiros. As for the other, the unknown murderer, he could only be taken for a phantom conjured up as a cowardly and utterly ridiculous disguise.

Octávio rose, indignant at that old foreigner with eyes as blue as the sky and hair as white as an unblemished cloud. He felt an urge to strangle him, to say close to his wrinkled face: “You lie, you lie, you lie!” But the foreigner went on in his stumbling accent, with clear words:

“Everything I have told you is harsh and painful to tell a son. I am a rough man, I know. But there are certain cases in which, even at the cost of a great sacrifice, we must tell the whole truth.”

Deeply shaken, Octávio did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the floor, his thoughts colliding wildly in his brain.

Who had murdered Eva’s grandfather? Who had betrayed his father’s secret? And how could he discover the culprit after so many years? What period would he investigate, what memories and mysteries disturb? How could he pick up the broken thread of that wretched intrigue? Life was so short, and if generations succeeded one another like waves, how could those already gone be brought back? Why had his father remained inactive? Why had he not struggled until he could bring the true criminal before his brother, his only judge? His dignity, his honor demanded every sacrifice to that end!

Crushed, struggling not to see a murderer in his father, Octávio hid his face in his hands.

Standing before him, Dr. Morton said:

“Forgive me if I have hurt you… but it had to be so!”

It was six o’clock when Octávio took up his horse’s reins and rode away alone along the road.

A deep peace lay over everything. The sky was a soft, even blue, without a lighter or darker streak, without a wrinkle, smooth and mild. The trees seemed motionless; not the slightest tremor stirred their thick branches. The wild evening flowers silently opened their golden cups, and among the dark green leaves the calla lilies poured their sweet scent from opalescent petals.

From time to time the piercing cry of a solitary sentinel, the bellbird, rang out from the forest, and among the dry leaves on the ground came the rustle of some animal hastily crawling into hiding. Four handspans above the grass, stretching over an immense distance beyond the reach of sight, spread a cloud of winged ants, called bitús in the province. It was a transparent cloud, seeming to consist of countless tiny, delicate daisies that had detached themselves from the earth and were fluttering in the air. Suddenly a bird flew close past Octávio and struck his face with its wing. Taken unawares, the young man jumped in the saddle.

Then he remembered often seeing this bird in childhood, accompanying the traveler through São Paulo at dusk, hopping and flying around his mount. It was the curiango, gray, the size of a thrush, with very short legs. It came and went, now close to the ground, now above Octávio’s head, now on one side, now on the other, dropping behind only to spring suddenly forward and pass ahead. For about half a league the bitús, opening and closing their two pairs of delicate wings, covered the countryside like a shifting whitish gauze. Their dwellings rose in frequent little earthen mounds scattered over the ground. Meanwhile the blue of the sky slowly darkened, and here and there and elsewhere a small, trembling star blossomed. In soft nests made of twigs and fine straws, birds settled their graceful bodies. From the purplish clumps of barba-de-bode grass beside the road, the great São Paulo fireflies rose into flight, carrying their light slowly through the air like a beautiful, brilliantly illuminated emerald.^12-1

And so, serenely, drowsily, night spread over the earth.

Octávio let himself be carried along by the horse he had bought only two weeks before from a plantation owner at Córrego. Exhausted in body and spirit, utterly crushed, he surrendered himself without direction to that silent, beautiful night.

Old Morton’s abrupt revelations had struck his heart like red-hot dagger points hurled with strength and certainty. He felt their pain and still did not fully understand them!

Clenching his extinguished cigar between his teeth, his gaze fixed on emptiness, he rode like a sleepwalker, lost in a profound abstraction, his mind blank.

The bellbird might cry hoarsely or shrilly as it pleased; leaves might rustle in the cool of twilight, stars shine, or the firefly dance innocently. He saw none of it. He rode utterly detached from nature and from things.

That irremediable tempest, that tremendous, unexpected blow had broken his strength, leaving him in an overwhelming, crushing state of collapse.

And yet he had not penetrated to the heart of his friend’s account. He saw nothing definite, nothing clear from which to extract the plain and precise truth of the facts.

At Morton’s house he had felt the urge to kill him, to choke back in his throat those malicious insinuations about his father. Then, nervous and sick, in an excess of sensitivity, he had wept. Now he did not. He felt an enormous weariness, the sensation of someone who had rolled from top to bottom down a rocky slope full of crevices and sharp edges.

Brooding over his teacher’s words, almost mechanically now from thinking of them so long, Octávio followed the road for a considerable time. His mount carried him to the closed gate of a coffee field and stood there, its head extended over the horizontal bars, neighing loudly. Recalled to the outer world by this abrupt stop and by the horse’s neighing, which roused its old companions, already stabled for the night, in the place where it had been born, Octávio realized he was at Córrego, two leagues from Santa Genoveva, and had foolishly made a useless journey.

The horse would not move. It kept neighing, joyfully but with growing impatience. From far inside the estate came the almost inaudible voice of another animal answering its companion.

Determined to gallop home without stopping, Octávio backed the horse up and pulled hard on the left rein. He accomplished nothing. Planting all four hooves deep in the muddy ground, its head jerked by the reins, its mouth foaming, its lip drawn back by the silver bit and its eyes blazing, the animal stood firm, listening to the yearning echo of its companion’s call.

Desperate, tired of whipping and tugging at the reins, Octávio cursed and dug his heels roughly into its flanks. The horse stood firm. He dismounted and tried to turn it by pulling on the bit, intending to lead it some fifty meters away before mounting again and riding on. It was all in vain.

The horse kicked, braced itself first on its hind legs and then on its forelegs, tossed its head violently up and down, and bared its large yellow teeth, between which blood was already running. Octávio was forced to stand away from the panting animal, whose beautiful chestnut coat was becoming covered with sweat.

Finding itself free, the horse quickly turned, gathered itself for a leap, cleared the ditch marking the boundary of Córrego, and disappeared at a gallop into the darkness of the coffee fields.

“Go to the devil!” its enraged owner shouted. What was he to do? Follow the animal on foot? Foolishness. He still remembered that the gate of the Córrego coffee fields lay almost a league from the house!… Better to take a shortcut on foot to Torres’s place. It would even be pleasant. He disliked the people at Córrego, whom he had met at Antunes’s sister’s house. The next day he would send his attendant to fetch the horse. Tonight he preferred to trouble Torres, cutting through the forest along a trail. It was much nearer. His mind made up, he entered the woods.

He had not been there for ten years, but his memories did not deceive him. Even so, he felt more uneasy than he once had.

The forest was dark and ominous. He seemed to hear strange noises and sinister birdcalls, and to feel the damp exhalations of little pools hidden beneath moss and broken branches.

After a time he realized he had lost his way… He stopped, undecided. Whichever direction he chose would be a matter of chance, so he went straight ahead, sometimes feeling his way with outstretched hands where the abundance of foliage deepened the darkness around him. In the blackest places he stopped, imagining a high, solid, impassable wall before him. Reaching out, he discovered his mistake and went on, only to halt abruptly again at the edge of great holes he thought he saw opening in the ground.

After wandering for some time through branches and boughs piled high, he saw firelight. It was a small, mysterious, reddish light, now hidden, now revealed, appearing suddenly in the dark forest like the marvelous lamp in a fairy tale.

Octávio sighed with relief. Here was a guide, a companion in the midst of that solitude. It would show him the way home. He searched for a trail leading toward it, but not even a narrow footpath opened in that direction! Had the light been kindled in the most inaccessible, tangled, and difficult corner of the woods? Braving every danger, he kept walking, frequently colliding with thorny or resinous trunks, his eyes fixed on the one bright point in all that vast darkness. At times the great, vigorous forest seemed to his troubled senses like a narrow cell with a low, damp ceiling.

Everything seemed to press close around him, ready to collapse upon him and crush him! As he approached, the light grew larger. Near it he heard voices, a low, fearful, gloomy murmur, but unmistakably human.

He understood. He had stumbled upon a quilombo, a refuge of fugitive slaves!

Through gaps in walls hastily improvised from thatching grass, branches, and bamboo, the glow of a fire sent fine, wavering golden needles into the forest. Half a dozen Black men, nearly naked, thin and hungry, were warming themselves around it. They crouched there, speaking in secret and gnawing the bones of chickens stolen from the nearest plantation, waiting for two or three companions who had gone in search of food under the dark, kindly protection of night.

Uneasy, cramped, fighting sleep, trembling at the slightest breath of wind, hearing a footstep in every falling leaf and a human cry in every birdcall, always fearing pursuit by the white man, plunging into rivers at the distant sight of him, coming out when they felt themselves dying only to roll upon the ungrateful earth, running with bodies shattered by exhaustion, always shivering with the hallucinations of fear, always pursuing the chimera of freedom and always in chains beneath the weight of a dreadful nightmare, these unfortunate men looked like mournful phantoms charred in the furnaces of a terrifying hell!

Slavery had sealed the smile upon their lips; fear had put suspicion and hatred in their eyes; hunger, cold, and sleeplessness had stripped the flesh from their bones, turning them into truly terrifying mummies!

Unwilling to alarm them, Octávio left them in their hiding place, certain that whatever way he spoke to them, they would take him for a spy. He moved cautiously and silently, but the men inside sensed him, hushed their voices, and poured water over the fire to extinguish it. Everything was silent and black again. Octávio groped his way onward, shaken and afraid, expecting at every moment to feel himself seized by one of those wretched quilombolas, who meanwhile were crouching with clenched teeth and trembling limbs. After wandering a long time, not knowing in what direction, whether he was going straight ahead or turning in a circle, Octávio began to smell smoke, which grew thicker and thicker, and to hear small, dry, repeated crackling sounds.

The horror of his situation assumed gigantic proportions! By now the entire wood must be ringed with fire, set for a devastating burn, while he could find no way out of this labyrinth condemned to the flames. Who knew? Perhaps the quilombolas were the reason for it! Someone wanted to kill them or capture them through the terror of fire…

He was already dizzy. He had convinced himself that for a long time he had indeed been circling the same ground. It was a large circle, but a circle nonetheless.

Meanwhile the smoke increased, and he heard more distinctly the crackling of burning vegetation.

He wondered why he could not see the fire, which was beginning its destructive work hidden like a murderer beneath the low grass, when suddenly he heard human voices in the distance and then saw a golden flame burst violently upward, only to sink again and remain like a wave licking the ground.

It was easier to walk now, with that beacon to guide him. He must hurry before the flames joined and cut off his passage out. He was exhausted, his feet plunged into pools of stagnant water, hanging vines struck his face… but he kept on until he could make himself heard by the people fiercely battling the fire.

“This way! This way!” shouted a voice he recognized as Torres’s.

Once outside, Octávio could breathe. The smoke that had nearly suffocated him was being driven onward by the wind.

Curious, Torres plied him with hurried questions that he was too tired to answer clearly. He sat on a roadside bank some distance away and told the plantation owner about his encounter with the quilombolas and his fear that the fire would reach them.

“There’s no danger!” Torres answered. “They know well enough how to escape everything… I didn’t mean to burn the forest. The fire spread into it from the felled brush against my wishes…”

Meanwhile the separate flames were joining, edging the whole wood with a broad red band. Here and there great yellow tongues rose, intertwining and waving softly in the air, scorching the atmosphere and closing ravenously, terribly upon the space they enclosed. The trees shook their proud crowns; the shrubs writhed in dreadful convulsions, shriveling and twisting their little bare branches. The flexible vines, drawing sustenance from the giant jequitibás and great perobas, became wires carrying the glittering sparks of the blaze, ladders of assault until the flames had strength enough to fling themselves heavily and suddenly upon plants great and small. The trees flung out their arms in struggle until they let their green, flowering crowns droop into the brutal flame of the merciless fire! Birds flew in frenzy, mourning their smothered nests, and reptiles left their damp burrows to crawl uselessly in search of an opening through which they might escape!

In a short time the whole forest seemed a sea of fire. The air, profoundly dark until then, was filled with crimson flares, the reds of dawn, while above them the suffocating smoke laid a whitish veil over that strong, bloody color. The Black workers shouted as they hacked a firebreak all around with their billhooks. The flames crackled, and sparks danced devilishly in the air.

Triumphant, the fire consumed the plants, thirstily drinking all the sap of the earth!

When the morning sun broke through the clouds, the blaze looked pale, whitish, cowardly!

Octávio, covered in scratches and smeared with blood on his face and hands, did not wait for that transformation. Remembering the long walks to which he had grown accustomed in Germany, he set off on foot for home, which was not far away, leaving Torres at his work.

It was nearly one o’clock when he passed through the gate into the yard at Santa Genoveva. The roosters were crowing, and in one corner water fell from the open spout into the little stone basin with an unbroken, monotonous sound.

Two days before Nicota’s wedding, the Medeiros family traveled into town.

The male attendants and maids had gone ahead on foot in scattered groups, carrying bundles on their heads. Two carts had also gone, loaded with trunks of clothes, large tins of crystallized sweets and sequilhos,^13-1 and baskets of fruit, vegetables, and eggs. The overseer was charged with sending all the flowers he could obtain on the following mornings, and milk, plenty of milk. Nicota’s wedding was stripping the gardens and leaving the calves’ throats dry!

Halfway along the road they came upon the land Torres had burned. The forest bordering the road was destroyed. In its place stretched a vast, bare, whitish field covered with ashes, as sad as a cemetery, where here and there a ruined stump, low, eaten away, and black, resembled a poor abandoned tomb! Yet inside those charred stumps, slow and hidden, the fire still continued its ravenous work of destruction, sucking up all the vigor of the earth, greedily feeding on every root of the extinguished vegetation!

Accustomed to such transformations, the Medeiros family paid little attention. Only Eva lamented the change, while Octávio recalled with bitterness the night he had spent there. On reaching the town house, which had long been closed, they supervised the washing of floors, windowpanes, and doors, the fastening of lace curtains at the windows and red hangings at the doorways. They then moved the table from the large dining room to an inner room so that the former could serve for the ball. Around it, against the walls with their varnished cream-colored wallpaper, they lined up chairs hired from the club. Between the windows stood vinhático-wood cabinets with mirrored doors and marble tops, displaying a tall, slender mirror and two porcelain vases filled with mixed flowers.

The front drawing room was transformed into a chapel. They summoned a decorator, a reputable man who had worked for churches and private households in the town for many years. Senhor João Coelho, very serious and grave, clean-shaven, with an impeccably starched white waistcoat and trousers and a very clean black coat, answered the call without hesitation. With great economy of words he replied to the comendador’s questions in monosyllables, and at the far end of the room erected the same altar he had been designing and making for thirty years.

It had a tall, flat back covered in silvered tarlatan, trimmed all over with little pink cloth roses among stiff, flat green leaves. On the altar table were fine linens edged with broad lace, a crucifix, the ritual book bound in black shagreen, sprays of tuberoses with silvered ears of grain, a small silver salver holding the wedding rings, and large candlesticks with wax candles. Beside them stood the silvered holy-water bucket and sprinkler. At the foot of the altar lay a carpet, two satin cushions for the bridal couple, and scattered flower petals.

In the other front room were gaming tables with packs of cards laid out; in another room farther inside, the buffet.

At the center of the buffet room stood a large horseshoe-shaped table bearing an endless variety of delicious sweets: pyramids of sweet egg threads; clusters shaped like caraguatá fruit, also made of egg, as were the elegant “rifles” standing upright and secured with a ribbon bow; puddings of every shape, kind, and size; dishes of algodão and pinha sweets; the celebrated veludo and other similar confections; ivory-colored towers made of thin, transparent ribbons of coconut, white and sugared, gracefully joined in artistic lacework; bowls of crystallized fruit; topaz-colored jellies and ruby-colored jellies; coconut flowers ordered in advance from Itu and from Dona Gabriella of Campinas, lavishly scattered over the whole table on stems, in wreaths, bouquets, and garlands, here purplish like the flowering spikes of bromeliads, there white, satiny, and moist like gardenia petals.

At the ends of the table stood two artificial coconut palms planted on little grassy hills strewn with insects and reptiles modeled in confectionery paste. Clinging to the top of the tree’s scaly trunk, the inevitable little monkey stole a coconut; coiled below, a formidable green-and-black jararaca raised its flat head as though preparing to commit the same offense.

From the numerous large, branching candelabra, candlelight fell upon the crystal.

In one corner of the room another table was laden with fruit: fragrant mangoes, some large and green, others small and blood-red; cut watermelons showing dark seeds in the pink gauze of their flesh; pineapples, jaboticabas, oranges, grapes, peaches, and figs, on stands and trays and in baskets. Beside it a room had been converted into a bar: dried fruit and cheeses already sliced on the counter, and many bottles of wine, beer, and liqueurs on the shelves.

From among the bottles’ bright, colorful labels to the fleshy pineapples or the delicacies on the main table, Senhor João Coelho, decorator, moved back and forth with the gravity of a lord, restoring symmetry wherever he found rebellion against style or a departure from established practice.

Everything was ready in the pantry. In the kitchen were four cooks and many assistants.

Trays bearing dresses from the dressmakers were carried into the bedrooms. The attendants brought boxes of gloves, fans, feathers, and satin shoes. Until the last moment there were things to be obtained, which at the first request the shopkeepers sent in abundance so that selections could be made at home.

The appointed wedding day had thus arrived. Octávio had not forgotten the anonymous letter accusing Eva and warning of an uprising at Santa Genoveva that day. Determined to speak to his father about it, he went to find him in the small sitting room.

The comendador was alone, rolling a corn-husk cigarette between his fingers. His son approached and asked what he intended to do: whether he would go to Santa Genoveva as soon as the wedding was over, or whether he relied on some order he had given the overseer.

Quite calmly, the plantation owner explained that he had told Antunes everything, and Antunes had offered to stay with all his men surrounding Santa Genoveva. In that way, he concluded, either the slaves would be too frightened to make trouble, disappointing good Eva, or they would be arrested and punished. “Antunes knows how to manage them. I can rest easy!”

Octávio thought it strange that his father should entrust such a delicate task to Antunes. He had not believed the letter and had therefore given no thought until that moment to any arrangements. But now, seeing that they considered an uprising possible, he had resolved to go to the plantation himself as a precaution.

The plantation owner opened his mouth in astonishment. Then he declared that Octávio was a puny European who would be wounded, mistreated, perhaps killed. Let him leave Antunes a free hand.

“Now there’s a man they respect!”

“Don’t try to dissuade me, because it will be useless,” his son replied. “I shall attend Nicota’s wedding and leave immediately afterward.”

“Foolishness! And if I refuse?!”

“On the contrary, sir, you will send me there, since you believe an uprising really will take place. You would go yourself if other duties did not keep you here! If I make a useless journey tonight, it hardly matters. But I will give no fool the right to call me a coward.”

“Bravado!” old Medeiros muttered, shrugging. Then he fell silent and angrily bit his unlit cigarette. He understood that trying to keep his son in town would be useless, and let him leave without another word. All his hatred turned upon his niece, whom he considered the fated cause of great future misfortunes in the family.

She appeared to his sick mind like a specter of vengeance and hatred, destructive and proud. He did not see his brother’s daughter, the sensible, honest girl. He saw the journalist’s granddaughter, the gentle, tearful shadow of the murdered man’s orphan, something superhuman: as though a cry of indescribable pain had taken on flesh and the shape of a woman, above whose head fluttered, like an ominous butterfly, the mysterious letter in which he recognized his own handwriting in enormous characters!

The comendador spent the rest of the day in terrible distress. Once more he tried to dissuade his son, but defeated by his arguments and determination, he withdrew despondently to his room. He could find no corner where he felt at ease. He wanted to tear down the new curtains and hangings, trample the flowers already arranged in their vases, and kick out through the front door every club chair so neatly lined up in the ballroom.

At eight o’clock the flower of local society moved through the brightly lit, flower-filled rooms.

The mistress of the house, hampered by her grosgrain gown with its long train and the artificial flowers on her breast and in her hair, felt awkward. She walked limply, bending forward, holding her mother-of-pearl fan in hands clad in white kid gloves.

As a rule, the women of São Paulo appeared at balls with a refinement of elegance and luxury seldom seen in Rio de Janeiro. Their gowns, almost always imported directly from Paris, combined richness with grace and originality. They had cultivated their taste in dress.

Families whose houses showed not the slightest glimmer of taste, whose interiors had neither comfort nor poetry, were almost empty of furniture and entirely lacked works of art, appeared at balls in a truly enchanting fashion!

The representatives of the older generation, elderly, ignorant women who could not read, knew how to dress with the gravity and distinction their age required.

Only a very few years before, a clever agent had made a business of traveling back and forth to Paris with private orders exclusively for one inland town. Not yet possessing the sweet and beautiful worship of the home, the feminine mind devoted itself persistently to personal adornment, not from coquetry—the women, thoroughly honest and upright in character and naturally beautiful, had no need of that—but to satisfy a capricious inclination of their temperament.

At balls this anomaly could best be observed. There the most important families assembled in all their splendor. It was a pity the gentlemen did not contribute to the brilliance of the room with equal refinement and care!

The first guests to arrive at the comendador’s house were Amaral and his wife, Dona Clarinha, a beautiful woman with extraordinary eyes, now emeralds, now turquoises, according to the ray of light that struck them, and very black lashes shadowing the soft whiteness of her cheeks. Slender without being tall, graceful, she lent her violet gown the charm of a Parisian and the black night of her upswept hair the luxury of a diamond diadem.

Her husband, a dark-complexioned young man with a thick, dark mustache and his head bent toward his chest by a contraction of the neck muscles, left her in the ballroom and went to the gaming room, where the comendador was talking loudly with two friends and political allies.

Carriages stopped continually at the door. The widow Camargo, Antunes’s sister, entered, still fresh in her dress of satin and lace the deep purple of a scabious flower, her brilliant eyes flooding her ruddy, brown cheeks with joy and light. Ahead of her came her daughter, all in pale colors, her charming head wreathed with flowers, her white, rounded, bare neck rising proudly from the gleaming foam of fine lace. Octávio escorted them to the dressing-room door, and Dona Clarinha, already surrounded by friends, pointed out the group with a mischievous laugh.

Then came, one after another, the Countess of Fontenegra, short and fat, awkwardly holding up her velvet dress, her white hair sprinkled with precious stones, surrounded by nieces of varying degrees of beauty; the daughters of Edmundo Queiroz; the district judge’s family; those of Drs. Lima Soares and Celestino Brandão; old Torres’s family—a whole cheerful, festive population. Last, after a delay calculated to produce a greater impression, appeared the wife of Colonel Tavares, a thin, angular old man, majestically trailing her train of golden plush. Amid the blond radiance of a set of topaz jewels she raised her brown neck, dusted with veloutine powder, and, composing phrases as pretentious as they were incorrect, shot sparks from her small, malicious brown eyes. Some decorated old gentlemen hurried to greet her with deep bends of the spine: that poor flower, already deprived of youth’s freshness, yet still vain of its false brilliance.

At nine o’clock one of the doors, closed until then, opened wide and the bride appeared on the arm of her wedding sponsor, old Ribeiro. Behind her came Eva and Noemia, flowers in their hair. The bride’s white garments seemed to bring more light into the room. A little girl approached and offered her a bouquet of white roses. Young Trigueiros had entered at the same time through the far door beside the comendador. He looked darker, shriveled inside his first tailcoat, his hair arranged in glossy little patches over his forehead and a forced little smile on his thin lips. Everyone rose and approached the altar. Father Rocha was already there, vested and smiling; beside him, unruffled and solemn, the decorator João Coelho served as sacristan.

The ceremony began and ended without tears. As the couple knelt for the blessing, the music burst into a glorious hymn. Minutes later the bride was receiving the customary congratulations. Octávio embraced her and disappeared among the throng, shut himself in his room, ordered his attendant to saddle the horse, changed hurriedly, and left by the back door to avoid being seen by the guests. He was heading straight for the stable when someone touched his arm. It was his father. In the darkness his face made a white blot, marble-pale; his labored breathing was audible. With a cold, trembling hand he offered his son a six-shot revolver. Octávio silently put the weapon away.

For a moment they stood silent and uncertain. Then they embraced with a warmth unequaled in their whole lives.

Octávio tried to reassure him with a hopeful “Until tomorrow.” But the old man did not reply. He pointed to the horse being led up by the attendant and stood in the same place until Octávio left, his distraught face a pale patch in the darkness.

In the drawing room the bride was giving orange-blossom buds to her unmarried friends. Smiling brightly, Noemia came to show Eva the spray her sister had given her.

“Look, it was the one from her breast. A year from now…” she said archly.

“What is a year, Noemia, to someone who is only sixteen?”

“But seventeen seems a very good age to me…”

“Perhaps you won’t even have to wait that long. See how quickly Nicota’s marriage was settled…”

“But I don’t want mine to be like that! I shall choose the bridegroom myself!”

“And if your father decides to marry you off without consulting you?”

“I’ll tell him no and no! Listen, Eva, I agree with you. One day you said: ‘I would rather die than marry without love…’”

“I was joking…”

“No, you weren’t! Listen…”

Noemia stopped in confusion, tightening and loosening the ribbon of her fan.

“What? Go on.”

“No, it’s… I’ve forgotten… Ah, yes!” Again she stopped, this time adjusting the flowers on her bodice.

“Come, Noemia, finish. Here comes your partner.”

“I’m ashamed…”

“Don’t be silly… Ashamed of whom? Go on!”

“Well, then… You know? It’s… Why do you think Senhor Paulo didn’t come?”

Eva started, but before she could reply, Noemia’s waltz partner was bowing before her, and the poor girl, still confused, rose, leaving her orange blossoms in her cousin’s hands.

Eva stared without seeing at the forgotten bouquet, her cheeks flushed by a wave of blood that had rushed violently from her heart to her brain. Noemia’s broken words had revealed a secret she could never have suspected, and in painful astonishment she repeated to herself: “She loves him! She loves him!”

Leaning against a doorframe, Dr. Azevedo followed the dancers with his eyes, now and then resting his blue gaze on Eva’s beautiful figure. Antunes’s sister barely concealed her indignation at Octávio’s unexplained absence from the ballroom. Her daughter danced, elegant but without grace, erect, silent, and serious.

She had been acclaimed queen of the evening, and upon her statuesque figure, like a swarm of bees upon a flower, fell a swarm of eager, covetous glances.

The ball lasted until three. Nicota left with her husband for Major Trigueiros’s house, where their rooms had already been prepared. She said goodbye to her family calmly, without tears.

After all the guests had left, Eva entered her room and found Noemia standing there, looking through the closed windowpanes at the shadow of the last departing carriage. Sensing her arrival, the gentle child held out her arms, pressed her tightly to her breast, and burst into tears, weeping without a reason the first tears of love.

Eva dried her eyes and advised her to go to bed and sleep off the fatigue and excitement of the night. She led her gently to her tiny bedroom, helped her undress, tucked the bedclothes around her, kissed her affectionately, and left without asking the reason for her tears. She had guessed it. It was undoubtedly connected with the question she had heard hours before:

“Why do you think Senhor Paulo didn’t come?”

It was late when Eva finally fell asleep.

Outside in the drawing room the comendador paced restlessly, smoking cigarette after cigarette, going to the window from time to time, listening for the slightest sound and looking the whole length of the deserted street, which was slowly growing lighter. A band of faint yellowish light fell diagonally across the houses opposite, all closed and silent.

Here and there on the gray, uneven paving stones lay little colored papers fringed at the ends, remnants of the candies served on trays at the ball.

Medeiros regretted letting his son go alone. He trusted Antunes, who had good men and resources at his disposal. Besides, he had advised him to take some soldiers along: uniforms intimidated the Black people.

The thought gave him a little rest, but soon his fear returned that at any moment they would bring him his son’s body, covered in blood, horribly mangled!

Leaving his sister’s wedding celebration, Octávio galloped at full speed toward Santa Genoveva. The night was dark and hot. Now and then a small flash of lightning briefly cut through the darkness. He went convinced that he would find everything peaceful. He could attribute only generous and pure feelings to Eva and intended to combat his father’s incredible childishness concerning the terror his niece inspired in him. But how? By proving her innocence through the evidence of facts. He longed to clarify everything, to confide to his father what he had heard from Morton and convince him that Eva did not possess the letter that caused so much alarm.

He trusted that once the fear of seeing evidence against his honor appear at any moment had vanished, suspicion would also vanish from his father’s mind and bitterness from his heart. His respect for his father made action difficult. He lacked the courage for the struggle, always fearing it was too soon to broach so serious a subject directly. He hoped to establish harmony in the family without his father even suspecting that he, his son, knew so appalling a secret!

It was eleven when he reached the plantation. He dismounted some distance away in the pasture, tied his horse to the shaft of a wagon, and went down on foot, astonished to find every gate open.

He went around behind the slave quarters, walking cautiously, and so reached the back of the main house. He was about to go around it when, approaching a corner, he heard men speaking quietly on the other side. Pressing himself against the wall, he listened.

“Everything ready?” one of them asked.

“Everything…” another replied.

“The house slaves in the compound?^15-1 We need to know that for sure…”

“They surely are.”

“Mind you, Joaquim! We have to do this right…”

“All right, Senhor Furctuoso! I’m a determined man! I’ll get to it, break down the compound doors in a flash,^15-2 and we’ll start making a racket. There’ll be sparks flying.”

“What a damned commotion! All of you, don’t forget to say Dona Eva sent us here… Otherwise the slaves will resist us!”

“Who’d forget that?!”

“If any of them wants to play the fool, you know what to do: shoot! That’s why the guns came loaded.”

“All right, men…”

Octávio had heard every word, filled with astonishment. His hands clenched; in his livid face his eyes had a strange brilliance.

Then it was true! Eva could stoop so hatefully to such baseness!

The pedestal on which he had placed her above all other women crumbled. The statue of compassion, the martyr he had imagined, was wading barefoot, brazen and dishonest, through the mud of a vile revenge.

He must not lose a minute. He must prevent the uprising. Octávio searched for a way to join those inside the house without attracting the criminals’ attention.

A multitude of schemes passed through his mind, each more confused and absurd than the last. Fortunately, the hired ruffians were on the other side of the house. He could return to the front unseen and call the overseer to his aid. He did so, walking cautiously along the wall until he reached the bell tower, where he stopped. Another group of men was crossing the front yard, speaking in secret. They passed a short distance from him with a low murmur of footsteps and voices that gradually faded into the distance… When he could no longer hear them, Octávio bounded up the six stone steps to the porch and knocked hard on the overseer’s window, calling loudly: “It’s me, Octávio! Open quickly!”

He had been heard inside and outside the house at the same time. But just as the overseer, pale and trembling, opened the door, a shot fired from the darkness drove a bullet into his back.

Octávio fell face forward into the house, striking the floor with his chest. The overseer’s wife dragged him into the corridor while her husband slammed the door. Then they carried him to a bed, where he lay motionless, stained with blood.

The revolt had broken out outside. There were cries, curses, and gunshots, the splintering of doors broken down, the frightened voices of women and children. Neglecting Octávio in their frenzy of fear, not even knowing whether he was alive or dead, the overseer and his wife rushed to pile furniture against the windows and door.

What would the overseer do outside? What was one man against a hundred in revolt? How would so many bitter enemies treat him? These were no longer the same lambs upon whom he had indiscriminately bestowed lashes. They were no longer unreasoning brutes without dignity or courage. They were furious men capable of anything to achieve their ends.

After an infernal hour the shouting ceased. From time to time someone beat on the door and hurled stones at the windowpanes, shattering them. The overseer cowered against a corner. His wife crawled on her knees, praying and striking her breast hard with her cupped hand.

They had taken refuge in an inner bedroom, almost airless and tightly closed, dimly lit by the faint, trembling flame of a small oil lamp before the little wooden shrine on their chest of drawers. On her throne adorned with hydrangeas, lilies, and carnations, the Virgin of Sorrows, a crystallized tear on her impassive cheek and a velvet mantle edged in golden lace falling from head to foot in a rounded curve—the Virgin of Sorrows, with a dagger driven into her breast, gleaming now and then in the intermittent flicker of the light—was, amid the cold shadows of that damp, musty room, these poor people’s only hope.

The overseer trembled, huddled and wax-pale. His wife, her face distorted, raised pleading hands toward the serene image. At one point her husband left his corner and knelt before the shrine, joining aloud in the Our Father she was nervously reciting.

As the shouting outside diminished, their spirits began to recover. Only when daylight entered through the cracks in the doors in narrow whitish ribbons did they venture down the corridor to the front bedroom, where Octávio had been left abandoned on a bed without sheets.

It was five in the morning when compadre Antunes’s voice shouted from outside:

“Senhor Honorato, open the door! We come in peace.”

The door opened, and the overseer saw the household’s slaves, bound and submissive in a long, silent line, surrounded by Antunes’s men.

At their head, Medeiros’s compadre swayed his body and puffed loudly, a peculiar gleam in his small gray-brown eyes.

“Have someone give these men a drink!” he said as soon as he saw the overseer, pointing to his hired men.

“All right!” the overseer replied, still trembling. “But come inside first…”

They entered the room, which was still dark, and opened the windows to the light and fresh morning air.

“Well, what is it?” Antunes asked.

“Senhor Octávio was shot with a pistol. He’s wounded…”

“Senhor Octávio! But isn’t he in town?!”

“No, sir. He’s here.”

Antunes turned livid. His knees buckled, and dizziness darkened his sight. A little later, recovering his usual energy, he said he would fetch a doctor and the victim’s father himself.

“A doctor… What for? Senhor Octávio is dead.”

He invited him to view the body, but Antunes, his eyes staring, refused and remained rigid and motionless where he stood.

The overseer left him and, taking a Brazilian-born Black man from the unfortunate group, ordered him to distribute liquor to the hired men.

The shock had overcome all Antunes’s energy. He had known Octávio as a tiny child and had always been especially fond of him. Of all the young men, he invariably singled him out, and he cherished the idea of seeing him marry his niece. This death was a disaster for his family, perhaps the ruin of Antunes himself, who had planned to bind young Medeiros to his private interests. He was entirely sunk in the apathy of his great grief when he heard anguished cries in a woman’s trembling voice and the sound of a body dragging itself along. Startled, he turned. It was Octávio’s mamã, the poor old Black woman, moving like a reptile across the floor, her belly against the boards, her legs withered by paralysis, limp and trailing behind her. All her strength went into her wrinkled hands. She stretched out first one arm, then the other, hooked her fingers into the cracks between the boards, broke her nails, tore her clothes, scratched her flesh, and panted with exhaustion, yet continued her effort until she reached the wounded man’s door, which she pushed open with her head in agonized desperation.

But the young man’s body lay on a high bed, and the unfortunate woman could not rise to see or kiss him. Exhausted, she began calling him in a weak, sorrowful voice, lifting her tear-stained face toward the bed she could not reach.

“My boy!… My boy!…”

She had awakened at dawn to the noise and asked her companion Joaquina, also an old woman, to find out what caused the uproar.

Joaquina went out and returned with news of Octávio’s death and the arrest of Jacintho, the poor paralyzed woman’s only son. Maddened with grief, she refused to hear details and begged Joaquina to take her to them. The other did as she wished. Unable to carry her gently in her arms, she dragged her like a bundle, leaving a smooth, swept, flattened track in the earth. They had gone only a short way like this when she remembered the gardener’s wheelbarrow. She fetched it, with difficulty seated the invalid in it, and managed to push it to the main house.

As soon as they reached the yard, they saw Jacintho tied to a companion. His mother wanted to approach him, but they would not let her. She remained at a distance, waving and crying as he departed with the wretched group for Antunes’s plantation.

The stocks at Santa Genoveva had no room for so many people. Antunes had therefore decided to confine some of them on his own plantation, which out of friendship for Medeiros he had turned into a prison.

Joaquina had taken the invalid from the barrow and, panting with exhaustion, carried her up the six steps when the overseer ordered her to go down immediately. Left alone, the paralyzed woman did not lose heart. She managed to drag herself to the room of her adored Octávio, tearing her skirt beneath her knees, breaking her nails on the boards, bruising her bones, and bloodying her flesh.

The overseer’s wife came compassionately at the old woman’s cries. She begged to be put on the bed for a moment. She would stay at the foot, curled up, still and silent, if only she could see her boy. At any cost, she wanted to see him! They seated her in the little corner between the wall and Octávio’s feet, which she caressed and kissed, crying softly. Then she dragged herself forward until she could take his fine, very white hand, shaking it gently and repeating in a whisper, as though to wake him without frightening him: “My boy… my boy…” He did not move, and she dragged herself farther. She kissed his forehead and closed eyelids… She stroked him again and again, then bent her head to listen to his heart. She remained like that for a minute, her eyes wide and her breathing suspended. Then a smile settled on her wrinkled lips, her gaze blazed, and she gave a cry of joy, a cry full of life, full of love, all soul, vibrating with feeling: a cry of triumph, the cry of a passionate mother seeing her idolized child return to life.

“My boy’s alive! He’s alive!”

Hearing these words, Antunes entered the room and approached Octávio. He too listened to his heart and felt him nervously, anxiously. Without a word he hurried out, his eyes bright and uncertain. His horse was saddled. He mounted and galloped to Navarro’s plantation, a quarter of a league from Santa Genoveva. He knew that a Dr. Castro, a physician from Pernambuco, had been staying there for some time, a man said to be thoughtful and learned.

Within a few minutes he was knocking at the doctor’s bedroom door, still closed and quiet.

From outside, Antunes explained what had happened, insisting upon haste, great haste!

The doctor dispensed with his shower and dressed without particular care, answering Antunes’s demands with repeated calls of “I’m coming… I’m coming,” and advising from inside that a mount be prepared.

While the distressed Antunes watched the doctor’s horse being saddled, agitatedly trying to help the attendants, Navarro’s wife, already up and sincerely concerned for Octávio, promptly sent a glass of milk and a cup of coffee to the doctor’s room with that hospitable solicitude the women of São Paulo bestow so generously.

Dr. Castro swallowed both drinks without savoring them, put his indispensable instrument case in his pocket, greeted the mistress of the house, smoothing the ends of his thick, glossy black mustache with his brown hands, and went down to the yard, thinking with satisfaction of the profitable acquisition of such a good patient.

After seeing him off toward Santa Genoveva, Antunes continued into town, spurring his already tired horse.

He reached the comendador’s house at six and found him alone in the great ballroom, lit by the soft morning light, amid drooping, withered flowers, a few trampled sweets, almost spent candles, and chairs in disarray.

Medeiros was pale, with traces of sleeplessness in his eyes. At the sight of him, Antunes drew back uncertainly and remained in the doorway. The plantation owner advanced toward him and asked, almost suffocated by anguish:

“What happened?!”

Antunes could not reply. Pale and trembling, he leaned against the doorframe.

“Octávio?”

“He’s…”

“Dead?!”

“Wounded… Go to him, compadre. Go as soon as you can. Your carriage and attendant are here. Don’t delay. Go, go quickly!”

“And Eva?”

“You can deal with that later. Go to Octávio!”

This insistence bewildered the comendador. Antunes took him into the backyard, knocked on the attendant’s window, and urged him to get the carriage ready. Saturnino, the mixed-race attendant, capable and obedient, harnessed the animals while the comendador scolded him for being slow. Antunes could not bear it. Supposing he would be quicker, he pushed the young man aside and began nervously harnessing the beasts himself.

Moments later the plantation owner departed for Santa Genoveva, bidding his friend a farewell full of anguish and gratitude.

When he reached the plantation and entered his son’s room, the doctor had just extracted the bullet from beneath the right collarbone, where he had immediately searched along the line of the wound in the back and found it protruding like a small swelling.

“Ah, doctor! Save my son!” were his first words.

“Rest assured. Senhor Octávio will live many years. By a hair’s breadth, he might have been dead hours ago… Now I shall be diligent and use every means at my disposal to restore him to health. Care is needed…”

Assuming a more mannered tone, he continued:

“The bullet must have passed through the apex of the right lung, which will naturally result in traumatic pneumonia. He will have a fever, and to prevent hemoptysis he must observe the most absolute silence.”

Medeiros looked at him without understanding and begged him to take up residence at Santa Genoveva and not leave the patient.

“I shall come more than once every day. I’m only two steps away. Besides, I have other patients, and although I don’t devote the same care to them, I cannot abandon them, as you see… But be assured I shall come three or four times a day… Today I’ll stay and spend the night with him, despite other commitments… What I ask of you now is care. Your wife?”

“She knows nothing…”

“She must be informed. Women know how to handle the sick more gently than we do…”

Medeiros ordered that the family be brought, intending to advise Eva to return to Mangueiral that very day. When he went back to Octávio’s side, his son tried to speak, but Dr. Castro forbade it and offered him an open notebook and a pencil. Trembling, the patient wrote:

“Protect Eva, I beg you, for…” The pencil slipped from his fingers, and he lay silent with his eyes closed.

The comendador read, frowned, and flushed. He was about to answer angrily when the doctor, noticing his rage, said quietly:

“Don’t upset him! A disappointment could kill him!”

The plantation owner then said to his son with obvious reluctance:

“I shall do as you wish!”

Octávio smiled and thanked him with an almost imperceptible gesture. Leaving him with the doctor, the plantation owner went out into the sitting room and questioned the overseer about the night’s events.

Confused and repeating certain points, Honorato told him that at two in the morning he had heard Octávio calling and knocking hard at the door. On Antunes’s advice, he, Honorato, had not gone outside before then and had resolved not to show himself. The slaves hated him and might kill him for it.

Impatiently, Medeiros ordered him to continue.

At precisely two o’clock, he went on, he had heard Octávio’s voice. Being nearby and listening, he had answered immediately. As he opened the door, a shot came from the yard and the young man fell forward. They carried him to the nearest bedroom. He heard him moan for some time; then, when he grew silent, both he and his wife supposed him dead… At five compadre Antunes arrived, and shortly afterward Octávio showed signs of life.

When the doctor came, his eyes were already open. He was moaning softly while the paralyzed Joanna caressed him.

He spoke without emotion of the old woman, whom on the doctor’s advice he had sent back to the slave quarters. The poor mamã, exhausted by her struggle, in a state of nervous depletion, as Dr. Castro had called it, had been left with her arms inert and useless, as completely paralyzed as her legs. They had carried her down lying in their arms as though she were a child! Medeiros suspended further inquiries. The morning bell would no longer be heard calling the people to work; the fields and coffee plantations would seem abandoned, the slave quarters closed from morning until night, and the cart roads deserted.

Before afternoon the whole family arrived. Young Trigueiros and Nicota stayed only a short time. Avoiding his niece’s eyes, the comendador gave a very cursory account of the night’s uprising.

His son-in-law uttered exclamations of anger and astonishment. Nicota, her head bowed, mechanically wound the ribbons of her traveling cloak around her hands.

Noemia wept. Very pale, Eva listened standing, her nostrils trembling and her eyes fixed. At the patient’s bedside his mother, resigned, sighed from time to time in quiet sadness.

When Medeiros had finished, the doctor asked one of the three women to serve as nurse. Eva offered, but the plantation owner replied curtly that it would be better to entrust the task to the patient’s mother and sister. A groan from Octávio interrupted the discussion, and Eva left in distress. Before reaching her own room, she passed Madame Grüber’s and went in, sinking into the blue armchair. Her heart was heavy. She sensed something terrible threatening her close at hand and could not understand what it was! What did her uncle’s behavior mean? Why did they reject her, who had done them no harm and had always submitted so calmly to their habits and wishes? She spent the rest of the day in painful reflection. That evening she returned to the German woman’s room and opened the window to the solitude of the countryside. A welcome freshness filled the room. She prepared and lit the lamp, brought writing materials to the table, and in her firm handwriting began a letter to her teacher. More than ever she missed that good, intelligent woman with whom she had exchanged ideas in sweet intimacy, and by whom she knew herself understood and supported in her cruelest, most discouraging hours.

Now and then Eva listened intently to Octávio’s groans and the murmur of voices and muffled footsteps. Then her pen resumed its scratching over the satin-smooth paper, white as her conscience, upon which she poured her whole soul, frightened as a bird loose over the vastness of the sea, without a rock to shelter on or a mast on which to rest!

The next day Dr. Castro changed the wounded man’s dressing for the first time, calling to his side the two nurses chosen by the comendador. But as soon as the bandages were loosened, at the patient’s first cry, his mother, almost fainting, admitted her inability and withdrew with her hands over her eyes. Noemia was nervous, trembling and unable to find what was needed. Turning to the plantation owner, the doctor asked him to send for someone else. Medeiros rose and fetched the overseer’s wife, Nhá Colaça. But the unfortunate woman was clumsy, and the impatient doctor dismissed her, suggesting Eva. The plantation owner tried to object, but when told that a patient’s recovery often depended on a good nurse, he resigned himself.

When Eva entered, Octávio lay with his shoulder exposed, his face flushed with fever, his hair clinging in large curls to his forehead, looking at those around him without recognizing them. She approached and gazed at him sorrowfully. With skillful tenderness she helped Dr. Castro apply a thin layer of carbolized cotton from the bullet wound in his back to the incision made near the collarbone for its removal, then pass a long bandage crosswise from chest to back.

That was now the only task they allowed her! Throughout the day and night other people would tend the patient, while her uncle’s cruel arm barred the door to her. It distressed her. She wished to remain always beside her cousin, encouraging him and watching over him. Added to her compassion was the fear that she might lose the man in whom she had sensed a sincere friend. His character had points in common with her own and much resemblance to that of poor Eva’s father. He was the only member of the family who understood her, the only one she could understand, sharing her inclinations and tastes.

Dr. Castro had declared Octávio’s condition very grave. Frequently coughing up blood, he spoke in his feverish delirium of a thousand trivial things. Now he laughed, describing an imaginary old woman with a large purple hat and a wasp waist; now he pointed out a priest who changed into a musician, the musician into a clown, and the clown into a donkey, passing through other unlikely transformations. At one moment he spoke of stamps on playing cards, at the next of his friend Adolpho and a Berlin café-concert where a grisette had fallen in a fit of nerves and a fat man had emptied a glass of beer over her.

A fit of coughing seized him. Blood poured out in gushes, staining the pillowcases and the front of his nightshirt.

Medeiros fixed his niece’s face with a look of hatred. Saddened, she thought of her uncle’s mysterious rancor and Octávio’s illness.

Dr. Castro remained beside the sick man, giving him sedatives, demanding silence, checking the thermometer, bending attentively over the bed from which rose the smell and heat of fever.

That night Octávio fell asleep. A profuse sweat drenched his body, and the fever diminished. At eleven he woke and saw his mother dozing beside him and a Brazilian-born Black woman standing with folded arms and wide-open eyes. He asked for water. His thirst was terrible; he drank greedily and fell asleep again. He passed continually from sleep to waking, each time moistening his burning lips and dry throat. Toward dawn he felt better, and everything that had happened passed through his weakened memory. He longed for news of Eva. Had his father sent her away? He wanted to ask about her, but his mother was asleep in an awkward position in her chair, and the Black woman was nodding. At seven his father and Noemia entered the room, but Octávio, exhausted, had again fallen deeply asleep. At nine he woke once more to find Dr. Castro and Eva, who was watching him with pity and sadness. He smiled at the sight of her. Then, hearing unfamiliar voices in the next room, he asked in a voice barely audible from the weakness caused by his great loss of blood:

“Who is it?”

“The police,” the doctor answered.

“To record the injuries, isn’t that so?”

“Yes. But don’t speak. Be calm. You need silence. Say only what is indispensable. I beg you most earnestly!”

Eva offered the patient some broth. Supported by the doctor, he sat up for the first time.

Outside, the comendador was answering the police chief, who had come to his door that morning with his clerk, Fonseca, a thin, fair-haired young man. News of Octávio’s injury had spread throughout the town, and on learning of it the police had duly appeared, although they had received no direct notification.

The chief, an experienced older man, was not surprised by this omission. He knew all too well the old plantation owners’ preferred method of punishing slaves who killed… Throughout the carriage journey he had been explaining to the clerk, still new to his work, how the affair was usually handled.

“There is a murder on a plantation,” he said. “Very well. What do they do with the murderer? Turn him over to prison so that justice can follow its lawful course? Not a bit of it! They want more complete revenge. They seize their prey, hide him in the gloomy room with the stocks, and, according to the victim’s rank, punish him severely, trying to make use of his labor while loading him with irons. In this way they kill him by slow degrees.

“To leave him to a jury’s decision would be to send him to penal servitude, and penal servitude, for a captive, is freedom. It would not be punishment, you see. It would be a reward!”

“In that case, shouldn’t the law intervene decisively in the crime?” the young clerk asked innocently.

“Oh! The law is often deceived, and… and often, too, there are various interests that oblige it to close its eyes. What can one do!”

As Fonseca looked surprised, the chief twisted his graying side-whiskers and continued:

“One thing should be noted, which to some extent lessens the gravity of the offense: many slaves kill without hatred, committing the most absurd villainies solely to be sent to penal servitude! If that hope disappears…”

“The number of crimes of that sort decreases, certainly,” the clerk interrupted.

“Well… I don’t know… but it is possible!”

Their conversation stopped at Medeiros’s door.

The police were received without embarrassment.

Octávio was still asleep, and at the chief’s request his attending physician wrote a brief account of the injury. An examination of the patient in the authorities’ presence was dispensed with. Indeed, to spare troublesome formalities, the chief said he would have a second doctor sign Dr. Castro’s report…

Octávio had to be prepared for questioning. While the doctor and Eva strengthened him with food, advising him to answer briefly so as not to tire himself, Medeiros explained to the chief that an anonymous warning had informed him that an uprising would occur at Santa Genoveva that night, instigated by someone he had until then considered above all suspicion; that he had asked his friend Antunes for advice and help, being detained in town by his daughter’s wedding; that he had told Octávio everything, learning only at the last moment of his decision to go to the plantation, so that every effort to keep him at home had failed, and so forth.

The chief then asked for the anonymous letter, which would clarify matters as soon as he saw the instigator’s name.

Medeiros rose and went straight to the desk. A desire for vengeance kindled his eyes. At last he would break Eva’s pride! Soon she would be unmasked by the unimpeachable voice of authority. He would see her kneel and beg forgiveness for her wrongdoing, terrified that everyone would afterward point her out as a schemer and an agitator.

She would certainly weep a great deal, and before nightfall she would leave for Mangueiral, repentant and humiliated.

The chief waited, leaning back on the sofa, his fingers buried in his thick gray whiskers. Fonseca, the clerk, sat before his open portfolio, ready at his post for the first order.

Medeiros put the key into the desk drawer and opened it decisively. He had placed the letter there among other important papers and was about to take it when he saw the leaf from Dr. Castro’s notebook on which Octávio’s weakened hand had written: “Protect Eva, I beg you, for…”

All his hatred, all his desire for revenge recoiled at the sight of those words that seemed to enfold a prayer.

The comendador returned in confusion, declaring that he had lost the letter.

The chief glanced sideways at his clerk, and beneath the latter’s fine little blond mustache appeared a concealed, restrained smile of ironic disbelief. At that moment Dr. Castro came to say that Octávio was ready to be questioned, and they all went to his room. Once they were settled and the indispensable formalities and customary questions had been completed, the patient answering in monosyllables—yes… no…—the chief asked:

“Did you see who wounded you?”

“No.”

“Have you no suspicion?”

“No.”

“Have you any enemy?”

“I don’t think so…”

“Which of the slaves do you suspect?”

“None.”

“But surely there must be someone among them who dislikes you…”

“It wasn’t a slave who wounded me.” They all looked at one another in astonishment.

“Well! In that case,” the chief continued, “you know who fired the shot. Why, then, did you say you hadn’t seen him?”

“Because I didn’t.”

They showed their surprise. Haltingly, the patient declared that he did not wish to be a party to the proceedings. The Black people of Santa Genoveva were innocent; outsiders had incited them. Whoever had wounded him could not have recognized him in the darkness. Then, omitting Eva’s name, he told everything he had heard.

He spoke slowly, pausing from time to time, propped against pillows.

The doctor advised rest.

The clerk’s pen recorded the patient’s words, and when the statement was finished he read it aloud. Honorato and the doctor signed as witnesses.

Medeiros afterward asked privately whether they intended to question the slaves.

“Not for the moment,” the chief answered. “But you must give me the witnesses’ names so that in due course they may be summoned before the court at the town hall.”

Accepting breakfast, at which São Paulo dishes followed one another in abundance, the chief questioned the overseer a second time about everything that had happened.

Turning to his wife, the plantation owner said:

“See that the chief’s orderly is served…”

She rose with a nod of assent. Glasses were filled, and conversation grew livelier. Even Nhá Colaça—short for Escolástica—confessed that she had made a vow to Bom Jesus of Pirapora for Octávio’s recovery.

The vow required the young man to walk barefoot on August 6, the feast of the miracle-working saint, to the little settlement many leagues away, where the multitude takes its prayers and from which it brings back sacred, beneficent relics.

Bom Jesus comes to the aid of every affliction, provided some offering is brought to his rich altar at Pirapora! On August 6 the town is transformed. It is positively besieged by human waves flowing in from every part of the province. The inns are not enough. Private houses overflow, as does the church itself, where many pilgrims spend the night for want of other lodging.

Faith, the sweet balm for great sorrows, and the payment of a sacred debt draw the believing and afflicted to that little corner of miracles. Most interesting, however, and truly characteristic, is that many people go to fulfill vows they did not make!

It often happens that someone is gravely ill. A relative or friend then raises their eyes to merciful heaven and, with pious intent, promises that once the sick person has been fully restored to life and health, he will tread the little stones of the road barefoot, carrying a bundle of firewood on his back, or a wax leg, or a water jar, or something else that humbles him and drenches him in sweat, to the merciful, powerful, all-just Bom Jesus of Pirapora!

Along the way one encounters curious groups: here women crawling on their knees, there others carrying stones on their heads; men exhausted with fatigue, leading well-equipped mounts by the halter. From time to time a little light shines at one point or another along the road: a taper carried by a devout woman.

When the feast and the sacrifice are over, they return peacefully to their homes in the sweet joy, the untroubled serenity that comes from knowing a duty fulfilled. As a safeguard against future illness, they bring back lengths of white ribbon measured to match the head, belly, or legs of the image of Senhor Bom Jesus. Thereafter, no friend suffering from a sore throat, rheumatism, or any physical ailment fails to apply the corresponding ribbon to the affected place as the best and most beneficial of panaceas!

Nhá Colaça did not disclose the sacrifice intended for Octávio. It was a secret to be revealed only to the patient, or it would lose its power!

She adored Senhor Bom Jesus, whose devotional print hung on her bedroom wall. First thing in the morning, her first glance was for the saint, so resigned, wearing a loincloth and short cape, his hands bound. She crossed herself and thanked him from the depths of her good soul for granting her the grace of seeing the light of another day!

After breakfast the police officials left under a burning sun.

The mistress of the house had a basket of very sweet plums placed in the carriage for the chief’s daughters.

When they were some distance from Medeiros’s house, the clerk asked:

“What do you make of all those hesitations, and how should we proceed with the case?”

“It takes no effort to grasp the truth, and…” Here he stopped to light the cigar already clenched between his teeth.

“And?” the clerk prompted.

“And as for the case, perhaps it is one of those that expediency requires us to bury…”

Young Trigueiros and Nicota left for Casa Branca one beautiful blue morning, after taking their leave of the family at Santa Genoveva and inviting Octávio to convalesce at their house, where he could also enjoy the fine hunting weather and the season of the fruitas, as many people in the province called jaboticabas.

Fructas was the name given to fruits of various kinds, from the wild gabiroba to the carefully tended peach; fruitas, however, was a term applied only to the delicious fruit of the jaboticaba tree. Growing of its own accord in the woods, untended, unwatered, and unpruned, the tree assumed a strange, uneven, fanciful shape, with a tall, sturdy trunk mottled with Havana brown and roots stretching out around it like great sinewy claws.

The fruitas, round and black, sprouted from the trunk and, clinging to the wood, spread in a prodigy of fruitfulness as far as the last ridge of root protruding from the ground.

Jaboticaba trees planted along orchard paths or in corners of gardens looked quite different.

There their satiny trunks rose straight to a lesser height, and their dark green crowns of tiny leaves rounded out symmetrically.

Young Trigueiros said he had a grove of jaboticaba trees on his property and pressed the family to come.

They all promised to spend a few days there, and the farewells were made without any great tenderness.

Dr. Castro came twice a day to see his patient, whom he declared out of danger only at the end of a week. Eva continued to help him with the dressings until they were removed for good. Everyone congratulated the convalescent, who secretly regretted the end of the only hours that brought him comfort: those in which his cousin, bending over his bed like an angel of mercy, cared for him with the devoted tenderness of an incomparable nurse. Sometimes he longed to kiss her hand and ask her forgiveness for having doubted her. He wanted to question her—or rather, in that brotherly intimacy, to tell her everything he had heard on the accursed night when he was wounded. What explanation could she give him? How and why had her name become involved in that base and cruel intrigue? But Octávio was never alone with Eva for a moment. She fulfilled her duty and left the room before anyone else, to send written reports of the patient's condition to Dr. Morton and Paulo, both of whom took a deep interest in him.

A profound stillness reigned over the plantation, deepening the family's sadness.

Once the greatest anxiety over the sick man had passed, Medeiros questioned some of the slaves in the stocks and heard the strange story of a challenge by hired thugs, sent by someone with the intention of provoking them to revolt. At first they withheld that person's name; but at last, compelled by threats and punishment, they confessed that it was Eva.

The planter listened standing, while the overseer carried out his orders calmly and readily, choosing some slaves to flog the others.

In that heavy atmosphere, smelling of blood and cut by the whistling vibration of the lash's thongs and the cries of the Black men, Eva's name sounded funereal, echoing again and again in the comendador's ears like a death knell.

Sometimes a more piercing cry struck him to the heart; but he remembered his poor Octávio, and the thirst for revenge quickly stifled the feeling of mercy. There came a moment when the cries grew faint: the punishment had to pass to other victims; those now exhausted must receive the customary treatment for their wounds.

The overseer then selected another slave for torture and the victim's own father as his executioner. In the gloomy room, where blood dripped from the hot bodies stretched naked on the floor, a scene of painful anguish unfolded. The son hurried to the place of torture, stripped himself with a feverish movement, and put his hands behind his back, crossing them to be tied. But the father remained in his corner, his head lowered, his eyes glistening, his legs trembling, and his breath coming in gasps. He was ordered forward again but did not take a step. A silence of astonishment and anguish followed the curses and groans. After a few moments the overseer repeated the order once more, in a loud, harsh voice, and the executioner fell to his knees, raising tear-filled eyes and imploring hands toward the dark ceiling, as though seeking the merciful God beyond it.

Medeiros went out into the yard; he was suffocating. He did not fully understand what was struggling within his heart, but there was unquestionably a brutal force there—all his feelings! Let the abominable scene be carried through in the room with the stocks, provided his eyes did not see it. He felt weary, bitten by remorse that pursued him like a fierce pack hungry for its prey. What a wretched condition he submitted to! To him punishment was an absolute, rigid, indispensable necessity. Without it there would be no discipline. Black men were like soldiers, who had their dungeon and corporal punishments to give them a stricter understanding of their duties. And so, often trampling pity underfoot, restraining a natural impulse, doing violence to his own soul, he ordered the most absurd and intolerable penalties carried out. Medeiros felt this truth bitterly. The blows he ordered struck upon his slaves now hurt him, and he turned his eyes away, shaken, from the instruments of torture: the great wooden paddle, the whip, the iron collar with its high hook, the shackles linked by chains, the whole arsenal of instruments invented by human savagery, hanging in a row on the gloomy wall of the room with the stocks. He felt tired of that life of alarms and anxieties. He could not fall asleep without being certain that the slaves were locked into the compound from outside and that the overseer kept the key under his pillow.

He believed he had the right to administer justice by the most barbarous methods; yet from time to time fears of a justified revenge took alarm and flew through his conscience like great, heavy black ravens. He followed the same methods his father had used, who in turn had followed his grandfather. Since childhood his eyes and mind had grown accustomed to those scenes of shadows, pain, and tears, and he had become so used to them that he thought them natural and indispensable. Yet he had fallen into contradictions ever since Eva had come to live at Santa Genoveva, and especially since Octávio's arrival. The two young people had brought to his hardened, indifferent mind principles of a sound and vigorous morality, born of compassion, of the love preached by Christ and enjoined by the Church—love of one's neighbor, a love that he, in his selfishness, had never been able to understand. Medeiros was waking, but waking little by little, still uncertain whether what he felt was wakefulness or sleep. Sometimes, in the presence of Eva's or Octávio's serenity, he was ashamed to throw his soul brutally wide open in an outburst of anger: a soul stupefied and numbed by an excess of crimes, as a Chinese man might be by an excess of opium. He resisted those feelings, and to punish himself he shook off the pity that was stealing over him and imposed harsher punishments. Immediately afterward remorse came to pursue him and lodge in his heart. Thus, now proud, now humbled, hiding his fear in a desperate rancor, he passed his days.

He consoled himself with the example of other planters more barbarous than he.

He remembered shuddering at the account of something that had happened on a plantation in Campinas. The master, whose hatred gave him a fertile imagination, had ordered a slave flogged; so far there was nothing extraordinary. But afterward he had poured honey in thick layers over the gaping wounds and all over the man's body—honey, the sweet, pure honey of bees. Anointed in this way, the unfortunate man was tied to a post in the yard, exposed to great clouds of insects that descended buzzing, delighted by a feast as sumptuous as it was unexpected. Unable to defend himself, the Black man watched the wasps descend and cover his body, voluptuously moving their transparent wings as they greedily sucked his blood, poisoned by despair and rage. And the sun lit that scene with its golden light, brilliant and chaste!

Other cases came back to the planter's mind. On his neighbor Gusmão's property, skeletons had appeared in the ponds, and they were said to be those of slaves tortured by their master. Compadre Antunes himself had abandoned a Black woman after a severe flogging; unable to move or wash herself, she had become infested with maggots all over her body and had died already rotting. Jucá Ramalho had kept a young mixed-race woman shut in a cage for fifteen years on suspicion of poisoning. In her narrow, secure cage, the wretched woman sewed all day at tasks rigorously imposed on her. Medeiros recalled every event of the kind, the most dreadful and unbelievable, to give his own actions a gentler, more merciful coloring. Yes! He would never commit such barbarities; he merely repeated the customary punishments prescribed for his class as the only means of ensuring order and security.

There were others, however, more merciful than he, who rewarded their slaves, gave them plots to cultivate and the right to sell the produce and keep the profits; who used neither fetters nor iron stocks, and fell asleep without alarms or concern over the key to the quarters. Remembering the hints his son and niece had given him, Medeiros regretted not having been one of those men, and promised himself to mend his ways—after avenging Octávio's wound!

He returned to the room with the stocks. The Black father, weeping, was flogging his son. In a surge of compassion and revulsion, Medeiros stopped the torture. The warm atmosphere, impregnated with the acrid smell of sweat and blood, made him nauseous. His sight darkened; a fit of dizziness made him stumble over a damp body stretched on the floor, and with a few hurried, faltering steps he reached the door, felt for it, opened it, and went outside again. The air did him good. He drew a deep breath and set off toward the house, exhausted and shaken, still hearing Eva's name uttered between groans by the flogged slaves. All because of her! Medeiros reflected indignantly. Entering the sitting room, he went straight to the hammock and lay down. He asked the attendant, Saturnino, about Octávio. Saturnino was a tall, affected mixed-race man much liked by the family. He returned with good news: Octávio had got up and was reading in a rocking chair, surrounded by cushions. After reporting on the young master's health, the attendant handed Medeiros two letters and a bundle of newspapers. Medeiros asked for coffee and tore open the satiny blue envelope of one of the letters. It was from Nicota. She said little about young Trigueiros's family and asked her mother for recipes for spit cakes and sequilhos biscuits, ending laconically: “When you want to comes, let us know.”

The second letter was from Siqueira Franco, a planter in São Carlos do Pinhal, a man of renowned wealth who owned many properties, among them one called Morro-verde, whose harvest never fell below thirty thousand arrobas. Medeiros received a pleasant surprise, which to some extent eased the distress he had endured that morning. The letter ran as follows:

“My good friend Comendador Medeiros,

“Women should be chosen like pigs, by their breed; and so I ask you for the hand of one of your daughters for my son Júlio, whom you know well. Reply promptly. You know our circumstances and my son's hardworking, serious character. If you agree, let us know at once so that we may come.

“Your attentive and obliged friend—Anastácio de Siqueira Franco.”

Eva was in her room sewing some lilitas^18-1 for a little Black boy who was her godson when she heard a knock at the door. It was Noemia, very pale, her eyes full of tears.

“What is it?” her cousin asked in alarm.

“Oh, Eva! I am so unhappy!”

Noemia threw herself face down on the bed, stifling her sobs in the pillows.

“What has happened? Don't be a child!”

Noemia did not answer; she went on crying.

Eva sat down beside her, gave her something to calm her, made her sit up, and, smoothing her hair, asked gently:

“Now tell me what has happened to you.”

“Something very sad!” the poor girl answered brokenly.

“My God! What can it be?”

“Father wants to marry me off!”

“Oh! To whom?”

“How should I know? Some brute—some idiot or other! But I don't want to, and—and I won't!”

“It surely can't be as bad as that! A brute! An idiot! Perhaps he is quite a well-educated young man. What is his name?”

“Júlio Franco.”

“I don't know him.”

“Neither do I, but I can imagine! Do you know how the proposal is made, and in what terms?”

“How should I know?”

“Well, listen carefully: ‘Women are chosen like pigs, by their breed; and so I ask for the hand of one of your daughters for my Júlio!’”

And despite her tears, Noemia could not suppress a burst of laughter. Eva smiled sadly.

“And now?”

“Now I don't know. Advise me. What am I to do?”

“Oh, my dear, why don't you speak frankly to your father?”

“Father gets angry, and I get frightened.”

“But listen: there are certain things one can say much more easily to a mother. Tell yours what you feel, and she will protect you.”

“Mother doesn't dare go against Father's wishes. I have no one on my side!”

“I shall go and speak to Uncle Medeiros, though I may not be the best person for it. Still, perhaps he will listen to me. Wait here; I shall be back in a moment.”

“No, Eva, don't go!” Noemia said quickly, getting up and placing herself between Eva and the door.

“Why not?”

“Because—because—” And Noemia lowered her eyes in embarrassment, searching for an answer.

“Has Uncle Medeiros said something to you about me?”

Noemia stammered:

“Father is fond of you.”

“Well, then?” Eva replied with a faint, incredulous smile.

“Yes, but you know—his way of thinking is so different from yours! He might suppose that—I don't know. Look, wouldn't it be better to ask Octávio to speak to him?”

“You are hiding something from me; I can see that perfectly well. Uncle Medeiros has made some remark against me. Oh, there's no use denying it,” she said, cutting short a gesture from Noemia. “I'm not angry. Everyone has their own way of reasoning and their own upbringing, and I'm certain the matter cannot be so serious as to prevent me from intervening in something of such concern to us all.”

Then, to dissuade her cousin from going to intercede for her, Noemia told her that the comendador had called her into the sitting room and, after a little preliminary speech, handed her his friend's letter, saying: “Luiz Anastácio asks for one of my daughters, forgetting that Nicota is already married, or imagining that I have more than two. Therefore you are the bride, since I have no other unmarried daughter. You will have an excellent husband. Go and tell Octávio.” She had protested fearfully, timidly: she did not know the young man, and she had sworn to follow Eva's opinion. “Eva's opinion!” the planter had demanded angrily. “What is that?” “That marriage without love is immoral, a great misfortune!” Then the comendador had flown into a rage, saying that if Eva interfered in his family affairs, he would—

“Finish!” Eva begged her cousin.

But Noemia, again choking with tears, fell trembling into her arms, begging her not to abandon her, saying that she felt ill, very ill.

Eva tended to her, loosened her clothes, laid her down, closed the window against the day's intense light, and, leaning against the bed, watched her pass from convulsive sobs into sleep, with slow, exhausted sighs.

Gabriel's orphaned daughter had resolved to face her uncle's anger for the sake of this poor, sweet, good girl, whose future mattered so much to her. In this way she would force a frank explanation from him. She loathed insinuations; she liked matters to be open. She understood perfectly well that she was unwanted there. They disliked her, and she had decided to withdraw as soon as possible to her beloved, quiet home at Mangueiral.

She recalled with bitterness the last wishes her father had expressed. She wanted to follow them and obey him in everything. He had been a rare man, good, just, charitable, affectionate, and incapable of a thoughtless act; always reflective, always calm, always full of good faith and surrounded by a halo of virtues. It was for all those reasons that he had placed her in his brother's house, thinking to shelter her from the adversities and baseness of an idle, empty-minded society.

Yet it was precisely there that Eva encountered forced smiles, cryptic remarks, malicious insinuations, a whole procession of elusive, cowardly intrigues.

Her dignity commanded her to leave, but she felt held there by the words of her great dead friend: Despite all their affection and trust, Eva must not live alone with Paulo, because he is not her brother.

To leave Santa Genoveva, then, she would have to marry. Her husband would be her shield. Intelligent, proud, and honest as she was, she had neither the right nor the power to take responsibility for her own actions!

Some man or other, even one less scrupulous or less intelligent than herself, must take her under his guardianship and give her a name perhaps less spotless, less honorable, and less worthy than her own! Without loving him, without being able to give him perfect happiness, she would have to submit to his will, his whims, his dominion, sacrificing her soul in the performance of deceitful duties.

Anything now seemed preferable to enduring, in humiliation, the slights of her uncle, whom her father had forgiven so generously, offering him what he held dearest and loved most tenderly—his daughter!

Where would Eva find this husband to rescue her from so sad and false a prison? She thought always, obstinately, of the same man. Though she tried to turn her mind away from him, it returned, drawn by a great mysterious force. With him she built the most brilliant dreams of the future; with him life seemed far more beautiful and sweet. But this someone showed no sign of loving her; this someone had always been almost indifferent and cold toward her. She discreetly hid from him the faintest signs of love, out of an exquisite scruple of pride. If he did not break the spell, she would not reveal herself. They would spend their whole lives beside one another, looking at one another without understanding, without making one another happy. Love another man? Impossible! Marry another?

Eva searched for that other man among her small number of suitors.

Her thoughts wandered for a long time from one to another, unable to settle upon any of them. But a decision was urgent, and Eva was as resolute as she was proud. After an hour's reflection she sat down at the table and wrote with a hand she vainly tried to steady:

“My dear Paulo—You did well to reveal Dr. Azevedo's secret to me. I am resolved to leave this house as soon as possible, and I offer him my hand. Write to him and arrange a swift conclusion to this plan of mine.—Your Eva.”

She sealed the letter, went out on tiptoe so as not to wake Noemia, and ordered the attendant to take it immediately to Mangueiral. When she returned, Noemia had awakened and was sitting on the bed, buttoning her dress to get up.

“How are you?”

“Better. Is it very late?”

“No; it is nearly three.”

“Oh! Have they called us to dinner?”

“Not yet.”

“Will we have time to speak to Octávio? I've just remembered that he asked me to call you!”

“Me?”

“Yes, but I was so upset that I forgot! If only I could get rid of that bridegroom!”

“Don't think about it now. Be patient; everything will be arranged.”

“Hardly! Once Father says something, he never takes it back.”

“We shall see. Let's go and speak to your brother.”

Noemia rose, kissing her cousin gratefully, and together they crossed the schoolroom, part of the corridor, and the dining room. The mistress of the house was rocking in her hammock there while she sewed. At her feet a little Black baby girl, a few months old and well wrapped in rags, slept contentedly. A short distance away a stout mixed-race woman was ironing a skirt with a deep embroidered flounce.

Saturnino, sitting in the doorway to the yard, was polishing the metal fittings of some harness. Noemia called him; he rose at once, very respectfully, and received the order to ask Octávio whether she might speak to him.

“Yes,” he said on his return, with his sweetened, pedantic gestures and phrases. “My young master Octávio bids me inform my ladies that he is ready to receive so honorable a visit!” And he bowed deeply, displaying the gaps in his teeth in a smile.

Octávio's room was not spacious, but two windows overlooking a side courtyard made it cheerful. It had gray wallpaper and solid, simple furniture: a broad bed, a washstand made entirely of marble, and high-backed chairs, firm and upright as soldiers at attention. Beside a heavy square table, the convalescent reclined against cushions, reading an engineering journal that had arrived a few hours earlier.

He had shaved and brought an elegant care to his invalid's appearance. His manly face showed promising signs of returning health and energy. For the first time in Brazil, he had put on a dressing gown of dark Indian silk, patterned with gleaming arabesques and cornucopias and lined with mallow green. Around his knees he had wrapped a Persian blanket, also brought from Berlin, from the brief period of his amorous meetings with the wife of a wealthy merchant on the Avenue of the Lindens.

How often his lover's little blond head had rested, perfumed and languid, on his shoulder, while his lips, greedy as bees, sought all the honey of her kisses! He had remembered her that morning when Saturnino brought him the dressing gown, holding it deferentially by his fingertips, and handed him an object he had found in the pocket: a tiny handkerchief of raw silk, with the initials T. R. embroidered in gold and brown. They were her initials! That forgotten little handkerchief had brought back a memory that had not visited him for a long time.

How had it begun? How had it ended?

It had begun at a ball at the Brazilian legation. She was dressed in white Tonkin silk, and the minister's wife had introduced her as one of her former schoolmates at the convent.

How had it ended? One winter night she had entered his bachelor's study and, throwing to the floor the velvet cloak that enveloped her, flung her arms around his neck and covered him with caresses in an outpouring of untamable tenderness. Suddenly drawing back, she told him they would not see one another again. She sent for the box of letters in her coupé and demanded her own from Octávio. They threw them all into the fireplace and silently watched the flames consuming so many flames; then, without another farewell, they parted.

He had seen her once afterward in the street, in an open carriage beside her husband, who greeted him with a broad sweep of his hat. She moved her head slightly, with proud indifference. And he thought no more of her, nor she of him.

Octávio smelled the handkerchief: it retained faint traces of white rose. Whenever he caught that fragrance, near or far, he felt transported to that brief period of luxurious, though easy, love.

Scents exert the same influence over many people. Every place, every house, and even every person has a particular smell; hence the memories our sense of smell so often awakens of a town, a street, or a dwelling.

Octávio turned the elegant little handkerchief between his fingers, then tossed it into a drawer that happened to be open. He went to polish his nails, occupied with other thoughts.

He had decided to speak seriously to Eva that very day and beg her to tell him whom he should suspect in the whole drama. Let her help him, let her bring light to his darkened mind! He did not doubt her, nor would he allow anyone else to doubt her. He loved her! He loved her madly!

To him, despite all the evidence accumulated against her reputation and good nature, Eva was the embodiment of purity, goodness, compassion, and good sense. He clothed her in every virtue, made a goddess of her, and cursed the moment when he too had doubted her.

Now he thought himself unworthy to touch the hand that had stretched so beneficently over his bed, bringing, in those delicately applied dressings, a balm for his atrocious pain.

Who was the villain working to ruin her in this way? What did he stand to gain? What motive could explain such inexplicable hostility? How far did he intend to take this distressing affair? Was it possible that Eva knew nothing about it?

Octávio was reflecting in this way when Noemia came in, excitedly carrying a parrot she had already taught to say the word “fool.”

“Would you like to see, Octávio? My parrot knows another word now! Say it, my pretty bird: fool!”

And the parrot, puffing out its neck, repeated in a guttural, muddled voice: “Fool!”

She laughed heartily, then, noticing her brother, exclaimed:

“Bravo! What luxury! Wasted in such a dreary place! What beautiful silk! Do they wear a great deal of this in Europe?”

“Yes, and here too.”

“Here? I've never seen it.”

“Of course. These are clothes for the house, which one can wear only in the privacy of the family.”

“When I marry, I shall tell my husband to buy something like that.”

There was a knock at the door, and a maid said from outside:

“Miss Noemia! Master's calling you!”

“I'm coming!” she answered loudly; then, under her breath: “What can he want? Well, see you later, Octávio!” She was about to leave.

“Listen, come here!” her brother interrupted. She turned, and he continued: “After you've spoken to Father, ask Eva to come and talk to me for a little while.”

“Well, well! You want an interview with your dear little cousin!” Her smile and glance were mischievous.

“What of it? Isn't it natural that I should enjoy her conversation?”

“Yes. For my part, I prefer it to anyone else's.”

“So do I. But go; Father doesn't like to wait!”

“That's true. Goodbye.”

Noemia ran out.

An hour passed, then another, without either his sister or Eva appearing. Octávio smoked, read, planned the best way to approach the subject that preoccupied him so much, and was returning to his reading when Saturnino bowed before him and asked:

“Sir? My ladies wish to know whether you can receive them.”

“Which ladies?”

“My young mistress Dona Noemia and—”

“Yes, yes, let them come in!”

Two minutes later Noemia and Eva entered.

“Forgive me for troubling you,” Octávio said to his cousin, trying to rise.

“Stay as you are; don't get up! And as for the trouble you gave me by sending for me, there was none at all, especially as I need to speak to you myself.”

“That's true,” Noemia murmured. “Eva has a great deal to say—about something sad that happened today.”

“Indeed?” the young man asked, turning to his cousin.

“In fact,” she replied, “my business is certainly more urgent than yours, and probably more serious as well. So you must be patient, but I shall have to speak first.”

“Of course; how could it be otherwise?”

Asking for his intervention, Eva then told Octávio about the marriage proposal, Noemia's tears, and her thoroughly justified dread of the future.

The young man reassured them. He would convince his father that he must not oppose his daughter's wishes and dissuade him from carrying out such plans.

There was a pause. Eva broke the silence, saying to her cousin:

“Well, now it is your turn!”

“Yes,” he answered uncertainly; then he turned to his sister:

“Leave us for a moment, Noemia. Be patient!”

A few seconds passed without either of them uttering a syllable. It was already late; the wall clock outside sounded a resonant stroke: half past three.

Before long someone would interrupt them to call them to dinner. Octávio considered this, and the impropriety of his cousin remaining there alone with him; so, though very embarrassed, he began at once:

“Listen carefully, Eva. I have something to ask you to explain, and at the same time a painful revelation to make. First of all, tell me: don't you believe that I am very much your friend?” He looked at her tenderly, pouring all the life of his eyes into hers.

Eva, astonished, did not answer at once. Her chair stood very close to Octávio's, bringing her into contact with the warm folds of the blanket wrapped around him.

“Tell me,” he insisted. “Don't you believe in my sincerity?”

“Certainly!” she answered, searching her mind for the reason for such a question.

“Then if I ask you a question or give you some advice, you won't receive it with suspicion or be angry?”

“No. I don't even know of any reason why we should distrust one another.”

“Good! Now something else: do you have any enemies, Eva?”

“I? No.”

“Absolutely none?”

“None that I know of, at least!”

“That is strange.”

“Why?”

“Make an effort to remember!”

“There is no need. My life has been so simple that I can see it all at a glance.”

“You have never harmed anyone, directly or indirectly?”

“What an idea, Octávio! Never! Or if I have, it was without knowing it.”

“So you are perfectly at ease? That's good—or perhaps it is bad!”

“Why do you say that? Is there something against me? Speak frankly! I have been uneasy, and the best thing is—”

“To clear up the situation. Agreed. You are no frivolous child; on the contrary, you are thoughtful and strong. But first of all, you must make me a promise.”

“What promise?”

“To say nothing about what we discuss here.”

“Do you think me indiscreet?”

“No, but nothing could be more natural than for you to want to confide—to your brother, for example—everything you hear from me.”

“In truth, I have no secrets from him, and the more important something seems to me, the sooner I tell him and ask his advice.”

“Are you very fond of him?” Octávio asked, leaning toward her, the pain of jealousy making him forget for a moment the principal purpose of their meeting.

“Very,” Eva answered, blushing.

“And does he return your affection?”

“In equal measure.”

“Exactly as though you really were brother and sister?”

“But did you send for me to ask such questions?”

“You see! You're angry already!”

“I'm not! I know that, as a convalescent, you enjoy many privileges. I shall not contradict you.”

Octávio smiled, took her hand, and was about to speak when he heard his father's voice approaching along the corridor.

He pointed his cousin toward the sitting-room door, murmuring quickly:

“Go, Eva. We shall talk later. It is better that you should not be seen here at this moment. Thank you for your kindness. Be assured that in this house you have a defender, a devoted servant ready to make any sacrifice to save you if ever he sees you in danger.”

Eva rose and fixed her eyes on her cousin in bewilderment; then she answered firmly:

“I shall not leave this room until you explain what you mean. I accept and return the friendship you offer me; I even accept your protection. But I want no sacrifices, nor will I ever allow you to expose yourself to danger on my account. There is no need for that, nor will there be. I harm no one and give no credence to intrigues. All I ask is the loyalty of telling me plainly if my presence here is unwelcome.”

“Eva! Forgive me; this is the last of the fever! I don't know how to speak to you, you see. What can I do? Who could fail to care for you? Who could fail to— Look what an insult you've hurled at me! How cruel you are!” He tried to smile, holding her hand and gazing at her lovingly.

Eva listened, motionless, pale, astonished, while her uncle's figure appeared in the doorway.

That day the comendador was beside himself with anger against his niece. The slaves' confession and Noemia's refusal, under her cousin's influence, to marry Franco had finally hardened his resolve to remove Eva from Santa Genoveva, to send her away plainly and for good. Seeing his son out of danger and already on his feet, he no longer considered it his duty to contain his hatred and let it explode.

“Well,” he said, approaching Eva with folded arms and blazing eyes, “isn't it enough for you to turn the heads of my Blacks? Are you now turning my children's heads as well? What are you doing here?”

She stared at him with pride and astonishment, and Octávio answered at once:

“Eva came because I sent for her. I have just asked for her hand.”

At these words the comendador, stupefied, opened his eyes wide and roared:

“That's what she wanted!”

“And it is what I desire most ardently. Tell me, Eva,” he said, turning to his cousin, “will you consent to be my wife?”

Medeiros bit his lips in anger. Eva raised her voice and straightened her body. After looking scornfully at the comendador and casting a glance of proud hauteur at Octávio, she firmly spoke a single, decisive, final word:

“No.”

Hearing that curt, firm reply, uttered with an irrevocable resolve that revealed the young woman's upright, serene character, Octávio turned livid. His father laughed ironically, shaking his head, and Eva left.

That same afternoon Gabriel Medeiros's orphaned daughter took leave of her aunt and of Noemia, who wept bitterly, and descended the stone steps of Santa Genoveva. Below, in the yard, the light carriage stood ready, and Honorato, the overseer, waited with it; he had been ordered to accompany her to Mangueiral. Eva took her place beside him with disgust. The driver whipped up the animals, and they set off.

The road was long, winding, and picturesque. They followed a narrow river, gloomy at that hour; the water murmured monotonously over the stones, and frogs croaked in the slime along the banks. Eva traveled in silence, thinking of the strangeness of her life, of the unforeseen, almost novel-like events that kept befalling her in surroundings so bound to routine and so averse to adventure. She envied the passivity, the sweet tranquility of other women, surrounded by affection, protection, and trust. How good it was to have a father and a mother! How useful to possess a serene disposition that could adapt to every circumstance! From her mother's family she had inherited that rebelliousness and independence of character which her father's upbringing, reasonable man though he was, had done little to soften. Sometimes he applauded her; at other times he called her rash and patiently showed her the error she had made.

Eva was absorbed in these memories when Honorato began to speak without looking at her:

“Those devils of Blacks are missed! When the damned creatures get a taste of the whip, they'll be sorry.”

Eva remained silent, and he went on:

“The coffee's choked with weeds, because the dogs can't work proper. But afterward they'll be soft as satin. Our neighbor Simão has the right idea—he don't forgive, that one! You know that old Bento who used to come to our place?”

Eva did not answer; he continued:

“He ran away! But the slave catchers got him, and he was put in the stocks to be thrashed. The hole in the stocks was too tight, and his foot swelled up so much the doctors had to cut it off.” And he laughed.

Eva drew her shawl close around her body; she was shivering.

“A Black without a whip ain't even a person. He's no use. The woods are full of runaways, all José Duarte's. He's a planter with no backbone—too soft! If he punished his Blacks, things wouldn't happen like that. Now, Mr. Antunes knows how to handle Blacks!”

He spoke those last words pointedly, staring at Eva, who seemed impassive.

“He was the one who tied up the Blacks at our place. That was a rumpus, wasn't it, ma'am?”

Eva had not yet heard an account of the revolt at Santa Genoveva. The event did not strike her as extraordinary; without imagining that her name was entangled in it, she avoided discussing it for fear of expressing an opinion that would displease her aunt and uncle. Now that the overseer seemed disposed to tell her everything, though she had given him not the slightest encouragement, she asked:

“Who led the revolt?”

“Why, good heavens! Are you making fun of me?”

“Really! Why? I heard it was Damião. Was it?”

“Why! Not a chance! Good Lord!”

There was a pause. Annoyed, Eva turned away and said nothing. Honorato then muttered, no longer making himself heard:

“If you had slaves yourself, you'd be stricter. It's easy to stir up trouble with other people's property!”

After these words he made a gesture of regret, but Eva seemed no longer to be paying attention. She attributed the remark, as she had attributed her uncle's, to her pity for the slaves.

Honorato went on:

“The wickedness of those devils, trying to kill Mr. Octávio! That deserves a good spell in the stocks!”

Eva turned quickly and fixed a look of keen curiosity on the repulsive man beside her. He disgusted her profoundly, and she shrank from contact with him.

She had disliked him ever since coming to Santa Genoveva. She always saw him with a whip in his fist, his big feet, their skin dry and cracked, thrust without stockings into heavy yellow leather shoes; a knife at his waist, a poorly buttoned cotton shirt, coarse hair, abusive words seething in his broad, fleshy, sensual mouth. Ignorant, a torturer, he imposed himself by brute force and beatings; abominable in his profession, intolerable in his stupidity. Yet on hearing him mention Octávio's wound, Eva could not restrain herself and spoke to him for the second time:

“But who can have wounded him, and why? He is so good.”

The overseer opened his eyes wide in astonishment, then, to make certain:

“What are you saying there?”

Eva repeated her question. He exclaimed:

“Just look at that! That's what I'd like to know from you.”

Eva took these words to mean that he was equally ignorant of the truth, and fell into thoughtful silence.

They had lost sight of the little river, which reappeared at one bend of the road and another like a marsh half hidden by weeds and watercress.

At last they entered a broad road between dark coffee plantations promising abundant harvests.

The sun was setting, setting fire to the windowpanes of a large white house standing alone in a broad valley to the left, very green and crossed by the red ribbons of roads.

Far off on the smooth, yellowish road they saw a dark speck which, as they drew nearer, proved to be a group of three men: two fierce, armed slave catchers dragging a thin Black man tightly bound with thick ropes, worn down by sleeplessness and hunger.

Seeing that he was already near his master's house, the Black man refused to walk. Frozen with fear, he dug into the ground his feet, scraped raw by the thorns and sharp points along the roads. But his unsteady legs trembled and buckled; sometimes he fell to his knees and was dragged along that way, like a heavy dead animal.

Through his dried-out skin his entire skeleton stood out in great, prominent lines. His bristling, tightly curled hair, dirty with earth, had reddish tones that recalled the wigs of devils in stage spectacles; his bulging eyes rolled in their sockets with an ominous expression of madness. Thus the wretched man stumbled onward, struggling all the while, amid curses and kicks.

As they came near the miserable slave, Honorato raised his whip to strike him across the back and urge him forward. But at that sudden movement Eva seized his arm firmly, tensely, while it was still in the air, and the carriage passed on.

That was too much! Red with anger, the overseer muttered:

“It's things like this that ruin everything! I'd still like to see what good it did, making that revolt at Santa Genoveva. Damn it!”

Incensed against her companion, Eva shouted to the driver to put the animals into a gallop.

It was already night when, exhausted and feverish, she stopped at the door of her beloved, peaceful home. She got down, hurried inside, and surprised Paulo in his study.

After expressing his astonishment, Paulo asked who had accompanied her.

“I came with the overseer,” Eva said ironically, “and someone had better give that animal a drink!”

“Eva!”

“Go, Paulo, go!”

He obeyed, and, finding herself alone, Eva began to cry.

The overseer of Santa Genoveva returned by the same road in the dull moonlight, whistling loudly, sprawling comfortably with his arms spread across the carriage's backrest.

Paulo's study was soberly furnished: rosewood furniture, a spacious desk with finely carved grotesque faces at its corners, glass-fronted bookcases, and old high-backed chairs.

Some of his friends laughed openly at this unusual luxury, calling it the most undeniable proof of his lack of sense. The foundling, Gabriel Medeiros's adopted son, sank his savings into things they considered superfluous—delightful objects of art, so rare in the province! Meanwhile, agents and commission merchants for the great Paris shops received enormous lists of expensive outfits. The ladies ordered silks and velvets, adorned themselves with lace, enveloped themselves in perfume, and lived in houses without comfort, barren, almost bare, and dreary.

The young men squandered the profits of their rich plantations away from home—at gambling, on women, in extravagances of every kind—and returned without joy to rooms full of hunting equipment, with clothes hanging on the walls and bottles of cognac and tobacco pouches on the tables.

Little by little a few exceptions appeared. Orders were no longer confined exclusively to showy dresses from this or that dressmaker; people also requested a dinner service bearing their monogram, some upholstery, or a suite of furniture chosen to the manufacturer's or shipper's taste. Yet personal adornments still predominated in these orders. Paulo's persistence in having elegant furnishings sent to the estate, concentrating all his indulgence on them, was considered astonishing and absurd.

“To decorate a house in town,” they said, “very well! But a country house!”

Yet it is on the plantation that the planter spends most of his life, that his days, good or bad, slip away; it is there that his interests lie, and the pride of his wealth.

When Paulo returned, Eva sat beside the desk, her elbows resting on a broad leather writing folder and her face between her hands, her eyes still wet and shining.

He sat down opposite her, turned the shade so that the lamplight fell full on her features, and, leaning forward a little, affectionately asked what had happened. He seemed calm. Eva shivered at his deep, velvety voice. She rose and paced the room several times without answering; then she came toward him and, still standing, with trembling lips and indignant eyes, began an agitated, uninterrupted account of everything: her uncle's unjustifiable, cruel words, Octávio's generous proposal, her refusal and hurried departure, the suspicion surrounding her, and the unkind way she had been treated.

Paulo listened in silence, his face darkened by a great shadow of sadness. He let her pour out all her resentment and anger; then he made her sit down and said slowly and temperately:

“You acted wrongly! The happiness of our whole life often depends on a sudden, thoughtless impulse. Believe me, my dear Eva: the greater our composure, the more certain our victory, in every case. Now, Eva, you were rash. You disregarded propriety and made no allowance for your duties as a ward. You opened the valve of your temperament and let it speak without consulting reason. Now, without knowing it, you may justify some suspicion that perhaps exists about you—something you could easily have avoided!”

“I don't understand you! I always thought you proud and just!”

“And have I not always been so?”

“Then how can you?”

“Listen: there is a great difference between us. I am a man, independent, responsible for my actions, ready to enter the fight, to roll with my enemy on the ground, in the very mud! You are a woman, without a father, without a husband, without a strong arm to defend you, to ward off the blows aimed at you, to strike the face of anyone who dares address you with anything less than courtesy. To provoke an ill-mannered, impetuous man is therefore an unforgivable error in a person of your sex and judgment.”

“And it is my parents' adopted son, my brother, who tells me this!” Eva exclaimed in agitation.

“Yes! I am your parents' adopted son. I have always loved them; I owe them my position, my name, my fortune—everything, everything. But I am not your brother, Eva! The law does not give me the same rights my heart confers on me. If it did, if society thought me worthy to protect and support you, to take responsibility for your words and actions like a true brother, why would you not have stayed here at Mangueiral, beside me, in the sweet, sacred intimacy in which your parents raised us? If only I could have, in everyone's eyes, the duty to advise you and avenge you!”

“But that is every honorable man's duty toward an honorable woman.”

“When that woman is insulted in his presence!”

“It wasn't in your presence, but will you also deny that I was insulted?”

“I deny it.”

“Oh!”

“You placed yourself in an utterly false position in your uncle's house. More than once I told you that your repeated displays of compassion for the slaves might be regarded there as a challenge. Your energetic, kindly conduct was certainly misinterpreted, in view of the family's unhappy history—old resentments, things young people forget and older people keep in their memories.”

“Old resentments! But what have I to do with them? Am I perhaps the cause of that mysterious hatred that brought my parents so much bitterness?”

“I don't know. I know as much about that story as you do. Some serious cause must have brought it about, although in those days family quarrels were frequent. But that is not the question now. The truth is that you were imprudent, Eva.”

“I don't regret it!”

“And it is also true that you will soon have a natural protector, a husband to shield you from every slander and betrayal. I hesitated to send your letter to Dr. Azevedo today. I shall send it tomorrow, and your wish will be fulfilled.”

Paulo took the letter from his pocket, read it aloud again, and asked:

“You haven't changed your mind, Eva?”

The young woman remained silent.

“Do you persist in offering Azevedo your hand?”

“I do.”

Paulo turned livid; then, with a forced smile:

“I shall do as you ask.”

He folded the paper again and was about to put it away when Eva asked for it with a gesture, holding out her hand. Paulo obeyed. Very pale, she tore the paper into many pieces and threw them on the floor. Then she sat down in a corner of the divan.

“Really, Eva, you are far too agitated!”

“Yes, I am.”

Paulo counseled prudence and an effort to regain her calm. Without strength of will, any danger becomes an abyss, he assured her. Go to bed and try to sleep. Giving oneself up to grief is the same as surrendering to an enemy. Rest and be patient; you will be happy!

Eva rose and held out her hand, which he clasped with emotion; then she turned her back on him and went to her room without another word. Paulo opened the window, sat down, and began to smoke, reflecting on all he had heard and losing himself in conjectures.

The next day dawned cool and rainy, the sky gray without the smallest strip of blue. Raindrops fell steadily in a rhythmic tap-tap-tap, streaming down the windowpanes.

Eva rose late. Fatigue and the previous day's deep distress had exhausted her; all night she had slept profoundly, overcome by the violent shock she had suffered.

Finding herself in her old room, sleeping in the same narrow bed over which she had so often seen her beloved mother bend with loving care; looking at those light, unadorned walls, the elegant, delicate furniture, the tall mirror in one corner of which she had painted a flock of swallows—seeing again on waking those cherished objects on which she had once lavished so much attention, Eva felt by turns sad and happy, oblivious to her situation, as though she had come there in perfect peace.

After getting up, she rummaged through the drawers. In the very first she found her old prayer book, bound in garnet morocco with silver clasps, a gift from her parents on the day of her first communion. What memories it awakened! How happy she had felt that day in her pretty white cambric dress, with a tulle veil over her wreath of roses. It had been in this very room that she dressed, trembling with joy like a little white dove trying its first flight. From the drawer emerged one object after another, scented with longing for a distant, happy time. Now it was a very small sandalwood fan, already broken, which Dr. Morton had given her one Christmas when she still wore short dresses and believed that fairies went about the world scattering chocolate drops and pretty dolls on children's beds. Next came a folder of her first drawings: monstrous things, churches shorter than men, men shorter than oxen, and oxen shorter than sheep! Then her second reading book, The Children's Treasury, now torn, yellowed, and full of dried flowers; then some crocheted lace, carelessly made in the haste that governs children's work; then portraits of herself and Paulo, whose name was linked to every memory. Here was his schoolboy handwriting in French exercises they had done together; there a doll's baptismal certificate signed by him, or a flower inside an envelope with a dedication. Thus a multitude of old trifles passed through Eva's hands, treasured like relics, reviving in her memory fragments of her happy childhood. Then she went to open the window and lingered over the flowers in the garden, all pearled with rain.

Faint streaks of blue already showed in the grayish sky. She was leaning against one side of the window, breathing the sweet scent of honeysuckle, when she heard ten strike, and went to the dining room.

Paulo, a good farmer, had risen early and, despite the bad weather, had already been out among the fields, wrapped in his broad cape of thin rubber.

Eva's whole account had greatly surprised and deeply pained him. He thought he had detected a powerful hidden feeling in her, held in check by an iron pride.

That feeling, as he saw it, was a profound love for her cousin.

Undoubtedly Eva adored Octávio, and to escape him she was hastily seeking a husband, however foolish he might be, ready for every sacrifice except bowing her head before her uncle, her father's old enemy.

That was it, it must be! They would be happy one day. And he, Paulo, who felt for Eva a boundless passion, an immense passion born in adolescence and strengthened in youth; he who had dreamed of possessing her as the ideal of earthly happiness, and who seemed each day to feel his love grow greater and firmer—he himself would work to bring about Octávio's marriage to his cousin, and, after seeing them settled at Mangueiral in the full enjoyment of their love, would flee far away to Europe or the United States. From there he would write them accounts of his travels and false reports of his happiness and well-being.

Determined to intervene and clarify everything obscure in that difficult situation, Paulo armed himself with truly stoic courage and resolved to hasten Eva's marriage to Octávio.

Comendador Medeiros's ill will would be overcome with little effort. To Paulo it was an article of faith that the old planter did not, and could not, harbor hatred for his niece, and that his latest incomprehensible behavior toward her had no cause beyond his perception and fear of the two cousins' mutual love.

Medeiros was ambitious, and Eva's fortune, though considerable, was far from comparable with those of certain young women in the district.

There had long been talk of a match between Octávio and Sinhá, Antunes's niece. She could indeed satisfy all the comendador's grasping ambitions.

Paulo prepared to persuade him by giving the greater part of his own modest fortune to Eva as a dowry.

Eva's position was delicate. Without worsening it by outbursts of indignation, he wanted to shield her from every suspicion. Solitude and study had sharpened his powers of reflection. Devoted and honest, he would have been capable of a crime if Eva's honor and happiness depended on it; but because he did not let first impressions blind him and was not violent, he was always sure of success. Calm, courageous, and intelligent, he met danger without boasting of his bravery, argued firmly and serenely, and emerged victorious from almost every dispute.

When Eva entered the dining room, Paulo was drumming his fingers on the garden door, looking through the glass at the trees washed clean by the rain.

Breakfast was ready and waiting. They sat down at the table, both seeming ill at ease, eating and speaking little. A maid from the settlement served them: an active, stout, dark-complexioned girl with very white teeth and smooth black hair coiled high in tight braids.

After breakfast they went into the music room. Paulo urged Eva to play and renewed his advice. She should pretend to be cheerful until habit made her so. She should make her presence felt in the house, give orders, take charge of the household, and employ all the energy of her body and mind in varied, absorbing concerns. She should put the previous day's sorrow out of her thoughts; everything would be settled without trouble, and peace and happiness would soon unite her with the Medeiros family. He assured her of this with a kindly smile as he led her to the piano. Then he told her that he had to go out and that she should not expect him until the afternoon. Without answering anything, Eva mechanically began Godard's “En pleurant.” Paulo listened to a few bars and then left.

Leaving the music unfinished, Eva went to the window. The wheels of Paulo's carriage had cut two deep tracks in the wet earth. It was no longer raining; the sky was now entirely blue. The sun's refracted brilliance, the damp leaves of the plants, and the fields flooded with light and soaked with water had a delightful freshness; the graceful little heads of the pigeons, appearing at the openings of the dovecote to inquire curiously into the weather, made her smile.

Eva guessed that Paulo had gone to Santa Genoveva. She awaited him impatiently, while lacking the courage to ask him any questions about it. She feared something she could not define, and Paulo's words about the previous day returned insistently to her mind: “Eva was rash and imprudent.”

What should she have done? Humbled herself sadly and submissively before her uncle? Justified his suspicions of seduction by accepting Octávio's generous offer and proposal? And did he really love her? She turned back into the little room, sat near the table, and began leafing through a book, determined to speak firmly to Paulo about the advisability of finding a husband. She remained there only a short time; then, following Paulo's advice, she went through the whole house, renewing orders, moving some of the furniture, weighing out the provisions for dinner in the pantry, and supervising the work. Domestic concerns achieved a great deal: Eva's mind was diverted.

It was two in the afternoon when Paulo arrived at Santa Genoveva. Getting out of the enclosed carriage in which he had traveled, he entered the corridor of Medeiros's house. Some potbellied, runny-nosed Black boys in coarse cotton shirts ran farther inside at the sight of him. Noemia came unsuspectingly out of a nearby room; on seeing Paulo she drew back in surprise and blushed. But quickly forgetting her own emotion, she approached him and asked with tears in her eyes:

“How is Eva? Why doesn't she come back? I've missed her so much—you can't imagine! You scolded her, didn't you?”

“I have no right to scold Eva, my dear lady.”

“But if you had, you would, wouldn't you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Eva did her duty!”

“Good heavens! I don't understand anything!” Noemia said, raising her innocent brown eyes to the young man.

“Neither do I.”

“Not even you? Then—”

“I came here to have things explained.”

“Oh! You want to speak to Father?”

“Exactly.”

“What a pity! He isn't here. He has gone to compadre Antunes's estate.”

“I can wait.”

“In Octávio's room?”

“Wherever you choose!”

“It really would be best to go there. Poor fellow, he is alone. Please come in—this way.”

Paulo obeyed, following the young woman's graceful, light figure and comparing her to a little bird, pure and white among sinister owls, to a fresh, fragrant rose among dry, scentless brambles.

After showing Paulo into her brother's room, Noemia fled to the old schoolroom, locked herself in, and, happy and trembling, sat in a corner with her hands pressed to her heart. She did this unconsciously; she longed to be near Paulo, to hear his voice, to see him and smile at him, yet she withdrew from him—from him, who had come to Santa Genoveva for the first time, and with whom she wished to spend every day! She felt the impulse to return to his side but held back in fear, thinking: “He must think me silly and dull. He'll say I don't know how to talk—that I'm a child!” And she went over in her memory the things she had said and heard, analyzing them confusedly in a delicious embarrassment.

Meanwhile Paulo and Octávio were discussing what had happened between Eva and the comendador.

The former insisted on a decisive explanation, demanding with perfect courtesy a clear account of the affair. The latter, revealing the pain his cousin's refusal had caused him, related with the detail of a legal deposition everything he had heard on the night of the revolt and his unshakable resolve to discover the inventor of the plot. He expressed a faint hope that, if he worked for Eva and she were vindicated, she might one day return to Santa Genoveva and forgive his boldness in proposing marriage.

This half confession made Paulo retreat from his purpose. He was working for the young woman's happiness, and only the course Octávio proposed seemed capable of achieving it. Believing her in love with her cousin, he could not bring her closer to him unless the initiative and the strongest effort came from Octávio himself. Eva was proud; she might die of grief, but would never consent to break her word without some higher reason. He, Paulo, must compromise his desire, his happiness, even his honor, provided Eva could one day be happy. To be happy she must marry Octávio, and to marry Octávio it was essential that he act heroically, that he demonstrate by deeds as well as words that his proposal had not sprung from an impulse of the moment, but from a passion with deep, vigorous roots.

This plan took painful shape in Paulo's mind while Octávio continued animatedly to explain his intentions:

“All this,” he concluded, “seems to us like a false romance, completely out of keeping with our times. Yet the real fault lies precisely with the age we are living through! The defenders of slavery are always prejudiced against abolitionists and ready to accuse them of any offense. In their simplest, most sincere words they see a hidden plot or a malicious insinuation.

“Slave owners generally have a very mistaken understanding of their times. They make no effort to discover where reason lies or what morality rests upon.

“Finding no sound arguments to defend their ideas, they seek not to fight but to crush those who oppose them. Thus they hurl the most humiliating insults at abolitionists. One no longer needs to work for the cause of freedom; anyone who merely shows compassion for a slave is immediately regarded with suspicion.

“As you know, Brazilian women have shown little heart in this respect.

“It is sad, but true.

“Although Eva does not extend her advocacy for the slaves beyond the family, she is to me a marvel! What do all the others do? Where do they hide their tear of compassion, that no one ever sees it? In view of all this, I am certainly losing faith in the much-proclaimed goodness of women.

“It was precisely this compassion for the captives that harmed Eva. Had she been indifferent, like all the other ladies, absolutely no one would have thought of involving her name in the affair.

“Influenced by their surroundings, shaken in their fortunes, and ruled by old habits, the defenders of slavery do not measure the harm their loud outcries do to their own cause.

“Instead of yielding, at least on one point or another, they redouble their severity, trying to bridle the freedom beginning to stir, without realizing that the tighter the bridle, the more untamable the desire to run! It seems that as light enters the Black man's mind, darkness thickens in the white man's, for fear is black and the longing for freedom is immaculately white.

“My father,” Octávio continued toward his conclusion, “was born among slaves. From his earliest years he was brought up hearing and seeing the scenes of slavery, and grew accustomed to them. He made his fortune as a slave owner, never considering whether the law that guaranteed him that property was unjust. Now, a few years ago, a voice rose in protest against something habit had made natural to him. After that voice came another, and then others, which drove him completely beside himself. Eva's laments and entreaties finished irritating him. Without understanding the imprudence she was committing, led solely by the impulses of her heart, she frequently intervened on behalf of the captives, whose affection she won. That intervention was disastrous. Counting on her protection, the Blacks committed offenses so often that my father felt obliged to refuse the pardons she requested. Perhaps a little resentment arose from that, and from the resentment came mutual distrust. This contributed in part to my father's childish fear of the harm Eva might wish to do him.

“Yet we must do him the justice of admitting that this suspicion did not originate with him. He accepted it from someone else who, naturally knowing his state of mind, planted it there. To what end? That I cannot guess! What I can say is that fifteen years ago it certainly would not have happened like this. Certain trivial things sometimes become serious, according to the way they are handled or the moment at which they occur. I repeat: all the trouble in our case lies in the age we are living through. At least, that is my conviction. The province lives by agriculture and believes that agriculture depends exclusively on the slave. Take away the slave, and the country is ruined!

“Hence the terror, and consequently the fear planters generally feel toward anything resembling reform and anyone who loudly proclaims its necessity.

“In the attacks of abolitionism they see neither indignation nor pity for a subjugated, unhappy race, but envy of their possessions and a ferocious desire to ruin them. Today no one reasons. Every idea is accepted, however absurd, provided it opposes the ideas of the enemy. The planters' minds are blinded and diseased, and in such conditions a mistaken feeling can readily take root.”

Paulo discussed the matter with Octávio at length. At last, resolved to yield him the whole sympathetic role in Eva's defense, he rose, urging him to hasten the family's reconciliation and clarify their situation. For his part, he promised to help by using all his influence with Eva; but as the matter allowed no delays, they must decide and act urgently. He pointed out the harmful gossip that would probably arise when people in town learned or suspected what had happened.

“No one outside will know why Eva left here,” Octávio assured him. “And there is nothing strange in her spending some time on a property of her own! Be discreet, and I shall undertake to provide an explanation that will satisfy you.”

“And until then?”

“We must be patient.”

“Impossible, my friend! Eva is in an utterly false position. It isn't right for us to fold our arms and wait for redress that may come too late.”

“No, it won't!” Octávio assured him. Everything would be settled in a few days. He already felt strong enough, and would go out that very afternoon for a little exercise, so that the next day he could go into town.

He begged Paulo earnestly not to speak to the comendador, advising both him and Eva to maintain a proud, independent attitude.

It was four o'clock when they parted. Paulo crossed the sitting room and corridor alone and climbed into the carriage, without noticing a closed window from which Noemia's eyes watched him.

He was not satisfied. Octávio's sickly rhetoric and his agitation as a sentimental lover had displeased him. Whether it was the voice of jealousy speaking within him, or indignation at not finding greater energy in Octávio for Eva's defense, he went away disheartened, weighing the words he had heard.

It was evident that Octávio and Eva loved one another! To hasten a happy outcome for that mutual affection, he, Paulo, must do exactly what he had promised: leave all the action to Octávio and shrink uselessly, stupidly into his own grief.

He reflected on this for a long time; then he persuaded himself that there had been rashness on both sides and that perhaps the affair was not as serious as he wished to make it.

His thoughts were diverted as soon as he entered the lands of Mangueiral. Now, to the left, he saw the red roofs of the settlers' houses, with well-cultivated plots in front; a little farther on, the vast coffee fields stretching out of sight on either side in long, symmetrical rows; then a band of workers, sturdy, cheerful men and women, their feet sunk in mud, swinging their hoes with skill and vigor. Some smiling children cheered as he passed. Leaving the coffee fields, he skirted the satin-green pasture, where the cattle made patches of white, black, and brown; then came the orchard's long, low wall, the garden arbors, the magnolia walks, the beds of varied jurujubás, and the side wall of the house, completely covered by the thick, dense, small-leaved growth of the silvina. What a difference between Mangueiral and the other plantations around it! He compared it with Medeiros's. Santa Genoveva was like most estates in São Paulo: a great house surrounded by uncultivated ground, without flowers at the windows or a tree to shade the door. Isolated like a frightened sentry, looking suspiciously in every direction! Kitchen garden, flower garden, and orchard were crowded into one area, separated from the house by a long, bare, scorching yard. Inside the house the same discomfort prevailed: little furniture, no elegance. Black children in shirts in the corridor; in the long, gloomy dining room, a few hammocks, a table, and rough benches. In front, the brick-paved coffee yard; intense sunshine beating on the dry earth and reflecting a yellowish color from the walls of the slave quarters—unlit rooms opening onto a corridor whose windows were barred like those of prisons.

In the fields the captives, naked from the waist up and gleaming with sweat, painfully raised their hoes, glancing sideways at the overseer until the beans and cornmeal mush for dinner arrived in a wooden bowl. Then came the hour of rest. They sat on the ground and devoured that food, heaping their iron or tin spoons.

How Mangueiral stood apart from all of them! Its workers were free; its crops were grown without being watered by tears; the settlers' homes were bright, airy, and clean; the owner's house was nestled in greenery, covered in fragrance and gentle shade. It might yield less, perhaps, but it was certainly far more pleasant. It was the plantation of the future, standing out among all the others, stupid and bound to routine. Like few others, it had abundant fruit, vegetables, and water, and above all a great deal of peace and contentment.

The neighbors discussed it—old sourpusses who pitied it and criticized its management. They maintained that it would yield three times as much if people knew how to run it. It lacked the chief element: the slave, who undoubtedly worked harder than a white man when held in awe of a stern overseer. It lacked economy and routine, and had too much of its modern roses, its fruit and ornamental trees, the comfort of a well-furnished home in the town fashion, the vegetables and milk distributed lavishly among the workers—in short, all the privileges that properties of that kind inevitably allowed. Yet Mangueiral continued to adorn itself and shower benefits on its employees.

The neighbors laughed at each new improvement and shrugged contemptuously. Unfortunately, they felt no envy, for if they had, they might have tried to follow the same system and thus greatly benefited their own education. Paulo regretted finding himself isolated amid so many fertile, beautiful lands, still enslaved to a perverted management, producing astonishing quantities but sacrificing thousands of men to that production.

The great estates, compared with Mangueiral, made him smile. There, accumulated fortunes and enormous harvests, but extreme misery in the degrading scenes of slavery; at Mangueiral, comfortable sufficiency, well-being spread from the main house to the humblest dwelling, and in everything right, reason, and justice. For a farmer of feeling, lovingly attached to the soil he cultivates, could any happiness be more consoling?

Paulo was thinking in this way when the carriage stopped at the door.

Eva came to meet him.

“Have you come from Santa Genoveva?”

“Yes, from there.”

“Is Octávio better?”

“He is almost well.”

“You talked, of course, about what happened yesterday?”

“Certainly.”

“And?”

“Peace will soon be made, and you will go back there.”

“I would rather live here forever.”

“Or that—but not in this way.”

“In what way, then?”

“Married.”

“Never!”

Paulo smiled and added: “Come, don't say that! Resentments pass. We shall yet see the comendador very fond of you. Octávio is a young man with a heart, and he loves you deeply.”

Eva raised an astonished gaze to Paulo. Changing his tone and trying to escape the subject, he asked:

“The lady of the house has ordered a good dinner for her first day, hasn't she? I hope so. I am so hungry!”

Eva did not answer and walked ahead into the dining room.

After his long confinement, Octávio went to his old friend Morton's house one beautiful sunny morning. He found him writing at his broad desk, covered with papers. They talked at length. Octávio needed the guidance of his information, and made him repeat the story he had already heard, listening this time very calmly and weighing every word. But the old man, claiming all the rights of friendship, also demanded an account of what had happened at Santa Genoveva. Octávio related the affair minutely, concealing nothing of the part concerning Eva and explaining his intentions.

Morton sat absorbed in thought, his hands in his pockets, his gaze fixed on one spot, his body resting back in the round, spindle-backed chair. After a short silence:

“And what do you intend to do?”

“Find the hired thugs and force the truth out of them.”

“How do you expect to find them?”

“That is what I don't yet know!”

“Did you get a good look at any of their faces?”

“No. It was night, as you know, and very dark besides. But I heard their voices.”

“That isn't enough; it may fail. Something has occurred to me.”

“What?”

“It isn't very likely, but still, it is possible. I mean, it occurred to me that Antunes might be involved.”

“Antunes?”

“Yes, Antunes! Why are you surprised?”

“I've known him for many years. I know he's incapable of that. He's an honest man!” Octávio answered.

“Honest, indeed! I've known him even longer, I'll have you know.”

“For God's sake, Doctor! Don't you see that it's absurd?”

“It isn't absurd at all.”

“What interest could the poor man have in plotting against Eva?”

“You are all very much mistaken about him, that's what it is! Antunes is wicked, ignorant, and a coward. This whole story is entirely in his line. Believe me, my friend, I wouldn't speak this way without reason. I've caught him at something similar myself—there you are! Besides, he is the only person who could have an interest in removing Eva from Santa Genoveva.”

“Why?”

“Why? How innocent you are! People say the man wants you as a husband for his niece.”

“So it seems.”

“Then do you see?”

“I see nothing!”

“Really! Don't you see that your cousin's presence on the plantation could damage the other girl's chances? Eva is intelligent and beautiful, with an education very uncommon here. She is therefore dangerous! Nothing could be more natural than your falling in love with her, and that is precisely what he doesn't want.”

“That would be petty—utterly senseless! Forgive me, Doctor, but I don't accept your hypothesis.”

“You are wrong not to! I've known Antunes for some thirty years, and I have serious reasons to distrust him. He was Gabriel Medeiros's bitter enemy and extended his rancor to the daughter. Not long ago, about a month at most, he had a quarrel with Azevedo over a slave that young man bought free with Eva's money. An illegitimate son of Antunes's, who died at the hands of the slaves and from whom Antunes inherited the estate he now manages, once had the fancy of asking for Eva's hand! His eye was on the dowry, of course; she was still a child. The family opposed it, and he had to swallow the rejection.

“It seems to me that all this together must have helped inspire and bring about the affair you've just described.”

“I've always thought very highly of Antunes!”

“Well, if I were in your place, I would try to find out who his hired thugs are. Then perhaps it wouldn't be difficult to discover the truth.”

“In that case it would be more honorable to go straight to him and question him!”

“It would be rash, my dear fellow! Well, do as you think best; but be certain of this: with that man, cunning works better than straightforwardness.”

Their conversation continued for more than an hour.

Leaving Morton's house, Octávio collected the correspondence from the post office and set off for Monjolo, Antunes's plantation.

It was hot. The shadeless road crossed broad, whitish, uncultivated fields covered with barba-de-bode grass.

Worn out by the sun and the journey, Octávio was closing his eyes, almost asleep, when the carriage turned and jolted downhill into a cornfield. It crossed slowly, its wheels crushing with a dull, harsh sound the dry leaves carpeting the ground. On either side the corn leaves hung wearily from the stalks like defeated swords; above them the ears stood wrapped in their already yellowing husks, their thick reddish tassels of fine, abundant, curling silk hanging loose like plumes on military caps. Beyond the cornfield the carriage entered another road, shaded at intervals by trees with broad, flat crowns. After some four hundred meters, beyond a few agaves leaning from a bank, a rustic house appeared, with two doors in front, badly whitewashed walls, a low roof, and a yard at the side fenced with rough pieces of wood bound together with vines. There were two sour-orange trees, a banana plant in one corner, and a stunted guava tree with its branches strangled by the fence. It was a country shop, and someone inside was singing to a guitar. Octávio thought he recognized the voice and ordered the carriage to stop. He went in.

The shopkeeper, his sleeves rolled up, was making out in enormous figures an account of the coffee stolen from their masters by slaves in the neighborhood and sold to him for a trifle. That was his trade, and what enriched him under cover of half a dozen bottles of Brazilian beer, which he had difficulty selling to an occasional traveler. Octávio asked for spirits, water, and sugar. While the shopkeeper leaned over the greasy counter, into which he had nailed two copper coins, and served him, Octávio looked curiously around the room.

On three rough shelves along the side stood many empty jugs and bottles, with beer or cognac in one or two of them; there were also sieves of various sizes, coarse straw hats, rolls of tobacco, and, in a crate, a quantity of black ash soap in balls wrapped in corn husks.

At the back, seated on a small cask, was a tall, thin caboclo, with a great mass of disheveled hair falling to his shoulders, a sparse, close beard, languid eyes, and an open shirt displaying his hairy chest. A kerchief was loosely tied around his neck; he wore trousers of Minas cotton and carried a large knife at his side, its leather sheath tucked into his waistband.

Nearby, seated on the first step of a little stairway descending into the interior, a young countrywoman, visible only from the waist up, was smoothing her straight black hair with a buffalo-horn comb. She smiled at the musician, who went on singing, swaying on his cask:

“Saint Anthony ties a Black man up
At the edge of the scrub;
All the other saints keep quiet,
Saint Anthony's acting a fool!

“The lady of Campinas
Has sent for me to come;
The lady of São Paulo
Won't let me go!

“I have my straw hat,
It cost fifteen hundred réis;
Whenever I put it on my head,
I'm never short of marriage offers!”

“Sing the other one, the one about patchouli,” the countrywoman asked. He agreed at once and, changing his tone, began again:

“Slippers made of carpet,
Lined with morocco leather,
A watch of gold,
A finely braided chain,
A white handkerchief in my pocket,
Smelling of patchouli—
Ah, ah, my sweetheart,
If only I could dress like that!”

Octávio waited for the song to end. The countryman played a few more bars, up to the sharp sound of the final chord, which he immediately muted with his hand spread flat over the strings.

“Sing another song, Nhô-Quim!” the girl asked in the slow, languid drawl of country people.

“Later on, Nhá-Tuca!”

“Oh! You're very sarambé today!”^23-1

“No, I ain't! Tonight we'll all come here together and dance a lively cateretê! That's the way!”

“Don't forget the accordion!” the shopkeeper remarked.

“I'll borrow it from Cacuta and come and play.”^23-2

“We'll have to get the bugias ready,”^23-3 the girl observed.

Putting aside his viola, the countryman rose and rolled a cigarette while Octávio paid his bill. They went out at the same time and walked beside the fence around the shop's yard, where a few hens clucked freely, pecking at pebbles and low-growing weeds.

The caboclo seemed to have guessed the young man's intention. He followed close behind, waiting to be called.

So it happened. Octávio turned to him and said:

“You are going to do me a favor.”

“Say what.”

“I want to know whether it was you who shot me in the shoulder twenty days ago.”

“Could be.”

“I want certainty.”

“Explain yourself better.”

“I have explained myself. I want to know who wounded me!”

“Oh! Were you the one who got shot?”

Summoning his patience, Octávio explained his intentions to the caboclo and offered to pay him well.

After a brief moment's reflection, the other man murmured:

“All right! He cheated me; I won't cover for him!”

“And who is this ‘he’?”

“Why, Nhô Furctuoso himself!”

“And who is Nhô Fructuoso?”

“Why, don't you know him?”

“No!”

“He's a fearless hired gun, famous all through these backlands.”

He then explained that Fructuoso lived on Antunes's land and often stayed overnight at the estate.

Octávio continued hopefully toward his friend's plantation. After half an hour's journey he opened the gate of Monjolo. Everything was commonplace: pastures full of broom, poorly tended coffee trees, and a shabby, low, dirty house isolated on patchy, barren ground. A short distance away the pond shone in the sun like a great sheet of steel, and much washing hung to dry on the kitchen-garden fence.

Octávio entered a ground-floor room with two unglazed windows, furnished only with a pine table and four chairs. A bunch of bananas was ripening in one corner; a cage with a thrush hung at the doorpost; under the table, against the wall, stood a tin box with a dented lid. On a shelf were a bottle of tobacco syrup for cuts and bites, a little wooden box of calomel from Lisbon for treating maggot-infested wounds, and a tin of ointment for sores. Beside the coat rack hung an armadillo tail and a Chilean hat. In another corner were three pieces of white peroba wood for whip handles.

Nothing more.

“Master's in the fields,” a young, neatly dressed Black woman informed Octávio. He decided to wait.

The housekeeper watched him as she passed through the nearby dining room toward the kitchen, a plate in her hand, without greeting him. On her return she looked at him again and ventured into the room where he sat, without embarrassment at showing her stockingless feet in plaited slippers or her uncorseted body in a cotton-print dress. Then, shy and regretful, she quickly withdrew and began peering at him through the crack of the side door. The deepest silence reigned. The sun reflected scorchingly from the house walls; from time to time roosters crowed in the distance, and the thrush pecked at the half orange on the floor of its cage.

The maid came in again with the coffee tray. Octávio drank mechanically, then turned to her and asked:

“Can you tell me whether Fructuoso is here today?”

“Mr. Furctuoso? He's gone traveling.”

“When did he leave?”

“Sir?”

“When did he go away?”

“Today—early this morning.”

The maid went out. The roosters crowed in the distance; the sleepy thrush hopped onto its perch; and Octávio, disappointed by Fructuoso's absence, felt that he was still being watched through the half-closed door on the left.

Antunes's rough voice broke the monotony as he approached, speaking loudly to someone else:

“That's right. Fructuoso's gone off to Casa Branca. Looks as though he won't be back soon!”

“And Navarrinho?”

“He went too!”

“To Casa Branca?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damn them! Things must be looking bad, then.”

“Exactly.”

They came in.

Antunes gave a cheerful exclamation on seeing Octávio and introduced him to his friend, a stout, dark-complexioned planter. After exchanging a few words, this man returned to the subject of the hired gun Fructuoso's departure for Casa Branca, showing his displeasure. He needed the man, he declared.

Coffee was served again. The conversation took several turns. Octávio skillfully brought it round to the revolt at Santa Genoveva, its causes and effects, never taking his eyes off his host's face, in whose features he sought to read guilt.

Not the slightest emotion appeared on his friend's broad face. Saddened, Octávio returned to Santa Genoveva. As soon as he entered the house, he learned from his father that young Trigueiros had written to invite him and the entire family to his estate for the inauguration of his Paulistana machine from the Lidgerwood workshops.

The comendador was pleased, and Octávio decided on the spot to go as well.

They fixed their departure for two days later, allowing the family time to finish its preparations for the journey.

Noemia was pleased at the prospect of the outing and of seeing her sister. No one had spoken to her again about the proposed marriage to Cerqueira Franco's son, and she supposed Octávio's intervention had put an end to it once and for all. But that was not so! That very afternoon her mother came, at her husband's command, to tell her that the Francos, father and son, would meet them in Casa Branca, invited by young Trigueiros at the comendador's request. Nicota would give a dinner for the betrothed couple, and they would set the wedding date there. She immediately spoke of ordering linen, dresses, jewels—the whole beautiful, expensive trousseau—so that there would be no delays or trouble. It was her father's wish.

On hearing these words, the poor girl wept. Her mother stayed beside her a little while, perhaps searching for a word of comfort that never reached her lips, not even as a faint murmur.

During the night Noemia felt feverish, and the next morning she rose pale and dejected.

Her brother tried to encourage her, promising his help.

After breakfast Octávio went out. He knew Dr. Castro was leaving for Pernambuco and wished to thank him for his care. He also intended to visit Mangueiral, thinking it a matter of loyalty to confide his plans to Paulo and thus explain his journey to Casa Branca.

It was noon when he reached the neighboring plantation. He was shown into the dining room. Dr. Castro, among the mistress of the house and half a dozen chattering children, was sucking oranges from a heap on a tray set on a chair. He peeled them with a sharp penknife; the thin yellow peel unwound in a long, narrow, curling ribbon that fell at his feet. The orange turned between his fingers like a little milky globe, without the slightest scratch in its membrane; he cut it into halves in the São Paulo fashion and offered it to the lady of the house or to the children, who crowded close, intent on the fruit.

Seeing Octávio Medeiros enter, they drew a chair into the circle, made him sit down, and congratulated him on his miraculous escape.

The Carvalho family were refined and amiable; Octávio felt at ease there.

Hearing from his patient the purpose of the visit, Dr. Castro confirmed that he would soon leave for Pernambuco, but would return with his entire family.

The hospitable province of São Paulo had won him over, he said, and he had decided to make his home there.

They talked of travel, the country's material progress, and various related matters. After an hour, Octávio was preparing to leave when the master of the house entered: Mr. Hippolyto de Carvalho, a thoroughly typical São Paulo planter and a notably kind man.

The planter was troubled by misfortunes that had befallen a German settler in the neighborhood. His employer treated him like a slave, not even sparing him the stocks. This had outraged Carvalho. Since he ought not to take the man into his own household, he was pondering the best way to protect him. Suddenly he turned to Octávio and said:

“You are the man who could do something for that unfortunate foreigner!”

“Most willingly! But how?”

“By finding him a place at Mangueiral. Would your cousin agree?”

“Perhaps,” Octávio answered uncertainly.

“I mentioned Mangueiral,” the planter continued, “because I think that little corner preferable to all the others. It already looks more like a European village than one of our plantations!

“There the poor devil would find some compensation for what he has suffered. And now that Dona Eva is about to marry, it is very likely she won't refuse to do such a good deed. Speak to her, my friend!”

Octávio heard these last words without moving, feeling a deep, silent anguish. Meanwhile Carvalho's wife was asking:

“What? Eva Medeiros is going to marry? Whom?”

“Dr. Azevedo,” her husband replied. “At least, that's what he himself let it be known only last night at the club, among a group of friends.”

“Well, who would have thought it!” the planter's wife exclaimed, looking straight at Octávio; then, with a smile:

“See how things turn out! People were already whispering that you were going to marry her.”

“We never thought of it,” Octávio replied, still a little tremulous. “We care for one another like brother and sister. Eva is very good, but she never even considered the possibility of my becoming her husband.”

“In any case, you must be well informed. Is what Azevedo says true?”

“I don't know, madam. Eva has been at Mangueiral for several days and may have decided something without our knowledge.”

They all exchanged somewhat surprised glances.

“Certain strange rumors are going about,” Carvalho went on. “They say—that is, Antunes told me—that she has been ungrateful to your father. Is that true?”

“No! Quite the contrary. Eva is very sensible and incapable of a bad action.”

“She seems a little haughty,” the mistress of the house ventured to say. “But that is so common around here that one no longer finds it strange!”

“She is indeed a little proud,” Octávio murmured. Desperate to escape the subject, he brought the conversation back to the settler's story, promising to speak to his cousin immediately.

They accompanied him to the door, and within a few minutes he disappeared among the dark coffee trees.

Azevedo is going to marry Eva! Octávio repeated to himself again and again in painful astonishment. So it is true! They love one another! How blind I have been! How cruel they are! They love one another; they will be happy—and I?

He wondered whether he should continue working to establish his cousin's innocence and freedom from involvement in the Santa Genoveva affair, or whether it would be better to withdraw from her forever, leaving things as they were. In that way he would avoid a familiarity that would often cause him bitter discomfort.

He did not want to witness this marriage. He would linger in Casa Branca. Let her be happy, provided he did not have to see her happiness!

Then he persuaded himself that it was all false.

His adored Eva would never belong to another man. He would find her sad, quiet, and alone; he would speak to her again of his love until she was convinced of his sincerity. He would work for her, revere her as before and always, and one day he would see his dreams fulfilled.

Arriving at Mangueiral, he saw an unfamiliar carriage at the door. They are going out, he thought; but just then Azevedo appeared at a window, gazing radiantly through his spectacles.

Octávio felt as though a great stone had been hurled at his chest. But concealing his distress, he made a friendly gesture to the judge of the orphans' court, who answered with a “Welcome!” into which he put all the hospitality of a man receiving an intimate companion in his own house.

What a fool! Octávio thought to himself, and went in. Contrary to his expectation, Azevedo was alone with an elderly lady who had come to live at Mangueiral at Paulo's request, as a companion to Eva. It was again Azevedo who introduced her, with the air of a man in his own home:

“Dona Miquelina, widow of Captain Rodrigues, a lady of the finest upbringing and today, one might say, Eva's mother.”

Octávio smiled disdainfully on hearing Azevedo pronounce his cousin's name so familiarly. Dona Miquelina frowned, plainly displeased, and turned to Octávio:

“Eva has gone to visit some sick children in the settlement. Paulo should not be long; he went to the coffee fields with an engineer friend.”

“Oh! Custodio?” Azevedo asked abruptly.

“Did he come after all? Poor fellow, he's a hopeless idiot, but he means no harm, in the end.”

“It was not he,” the housekeeper replied. “The gentleman who came is very distinguished and a friend of ours: Dr. Morton.”

“Oh! The old fellow from the school?”

“The very same.”

“A fine man,” Octávio observed.

“Yes, I don't deny it. He certainly does no one any harm,” Azevedo replied, “but he is tedious and unpleasant, like every Yankee!”

Octávio was about to answer sharply when Paulo came in.

Dr. Morton had gone straight from the coffee fields into town, delighted with the cultivation at Mangueiral. Surprised to find Octávio there, Paulo greeted Azevedo hurriedly; the latter began humming to conceal his annoyance.

As all Paulo's attention went to Octávio, the judge turned to Dona Miquelina and invited her to accompany him to the settlement, where, he had been told, Eva was carrying out her charitable mission of visiting the sick.

Dona Miquelina hesitated uncertainly, but Paulo approved the idea, taking the opportunity to speak with Octávio alone. Octávio then explained his plans, justifying his departure and perhaps even a prolonged stay in Casa Branca.

Meanwhile Dona Miquelina and Azevedo walked down the long bamboo avenue toward the settlement. It was shady and cool there; the cicadas sang in long, shrill bursts, and little yellow butterflies pursued one another in circling flight.

They had gone some distance in silence, lost in thought, when Eva appeared at the end of the avenue, a flowering branch in her hand and a scarlet linen parasol shielding her from the sun, coloring her with its vivid, blood-red reflections.

“Come now—courage!” Azevedo said under his breath, without noticing the astonishment his words caused Dona Miquelina. A little later the three met.

Eva told the housekeeper that she had found Salomão's daughter well on the way to recovery, and asked her to arrange some sweets in a little basket to send to the girl. She still had something to do herself: she was going from there to Jeronymo's house. He had been gored by a fierce ox and was bleeding from the mouth.

“I have just heard that Paulo sent for the doctor. I am impatient for him to arrive—poor Jeronymo! So please go, Dona Miquelina, and arrange the little sweets for the child.”

Eva held out her hand to Azevedo in farewell, but he bowed and asked permission to accompany her as far as the sick man's door.

“As you wish,” the young woman answered with a distant, cool manner.

They went on, now shaded by the branches, now struck by sunlight which, between the clumps of bamboo, laid arabesques and golden stripes on the ground.

The silence could not last long. In a burst of courage the judge broke it:

“For a long time I have cherished a mad desire to speak to you.”

Eva turned her face calmly toward him. Azevedo continued:

“The feeling you inspire in me cannot have escaped your notice. But you are so cruel that, showing not the slightest liking for me, you pretend to be unaware of the great, extraordinary affection I devote to you! Now, however, be frank, I beg you, and forgive my boldness in confessing my love.”

“You ask me to be frank as though anyone in such a position would be otherwise! You might have spared me the pain of disappointing you, had you chosen to understand that if I pretended, as you say, to be unaware of your affection, it was because I could not return it. You also said I had never shown you the slightest liking. There you are unjust. I believe I have given you sufficient proof of trust and friendship.”

They fell silent. With lowered head, Azevedo searched for some phrase with which to end the conversation. They left the bamboo avenue and crossed a little field starred with the tiny flowers of the juazeiro trees. The sun beat down full upon them in a burning, brilliant radiance. Nearby they could already see, arranged in a row, the settlers' houses with their light walls and red roofs.

“Let me believe, Dona Eva, that at least you are not angry with me—that you do not think my aspiration insolent,” Azevedo stammered.

Eva stopped, frankly held out her hand, and said:

“Believe that in me you have a sincere friend, ready to defend you against any insult, ready to care for you devotedly if ever you lack a nurse's attention. Forget everything you have said to me and everything you have heard from me, except this last promise: to be to you the same as a sister.”

The judge limply pressed the hand she offered and, raising his steel-colored eyes, lingered for a moment in contemplation of her.

Never had Gabriel Medeiros's orphaned daughter seemed so beautiful to him. Her red parasol, pierced by the light, tinted her in warm, ruddy tones, laying reflections of dawn on her black hair, her brown face, and her pale dress, gathered at the waist and sprinkled with rosebuds.

A gentle moisture swam in Eva's velvety eyes, a feeling of compassion and sorrow that made them slightly languid and perhaps more beautiful.

Azevedo murmured a few commonplace words of flat, dispirited thanks and left after the young woman had entered the sick settler's house. All along the way he saw her again in his mind: tall and slender, treading the grass and low flowers of the field beneath the parasol which, like a great open poppy, let its brilliant, vivid crimson fall over her, softened and diffused.

When Eva returned home, both Azevedo and Octávio had gone. Dona Miquelina was sewing beside the garden door, and through the open study window Eva saw Paulo standing beside the bookcase, leafing through a book.

At nine o’clock one February morning, Comendador Medeiros’s family left for Casa Branca.

On entering the railway carriage they found Antunes’s sister and her daughter, Sinhá, who sat in a corner with her gloved hands folded over a fine Russia-leather bag with gleaming metal clasps.

Besides them, the compartment contained a family of four—wife, husband, daughter, and nurse—who had come from farther away and were dusty from their journey, and a priest who was sound asleep.

The arrival of the Medeiros family caused a great shifting of baskets and bundles, which the travelers already installed had scattered everywhere and were now obliged to pile close beside them.

What a nuisance! Until then they had traveled at their ease, hoping at every station that no one would get in...

Tins clattered together and bags were hastily dragged aside. The black nurse handed the child to her mistress and went to gather up the diapers and oranges the little girl had scattered.

After a moment’s hesitation, the head of the family deigned to uncoil his long, limp legs from the seat and move his trunks and cardboard boxes out of the way.

Everything arranged, he returned serenely to his corner, removed one boot with a sigh of relief, and began stroking his foot through its white cotton sock.

Meanwhile his wife, her large green eyes bulging with annoyance, concealed from the newcomers the lighted cigarette she had been smoking there, directly in front of the sleeping priest’s wobbling double chin.

Both Comendador Medeiros and Sinhá’s mother were pleased with the encounter, and silently thanked the kindly god of chance for sending them on this little journey at the same time.

Unfortunately they were not bound for the same place. The widow was going to spend a week or so in Campinas; she liked that town, half hidden between two hills, and expressed a certain wish to settle there as soon as her daughter married.

Hearing these plans, the comendador glanced sideways at his son, who sat beside the small carriage window calmly reading a newspaper from the capital.

The train went on, whistling as it approached the stations, rapidly covering the distance, without Octávio addressing a single courtesy, a glance, or a word to the girl so plainly being offered to him.

He found something repellent in the compliant passivity of that pretty, elegant little creature, who let others gamble with her fate without intervening so much as with a reflection, a question, a gleam of intelligence, dignity, or initiative.

Never had Antunes’s niece looked so beautiful to him! She really was the loveliest woman in the whole district! From the white gauze that enveloped her hat and was tied in a great bow beneath her chin emerged her round white neck and a face with the pure, harmonious lines of a statue.

Opposite her, Noemia, with her irregular, charming profile, almost looked plain; the poor girl’s eyes were red from the tears her father’s decision forced her to shed. Beside her, her mother listened to Antunes’s sister with enviable serenity, offering the little biscuits she had brought in her dark wicker basket, encircled by two turns of a Havana-brown strap.

The widow chewed the biscuits voluptuously, turning her large black eyes from one side to the other. She varied the subject, moving from the longed-for marriage of her lovely Sinhá to matters of farming and wealth. She declared her plantation one of the most productive; Dr. Azevedo, who had dined with her the day before, had assured her he knew of no estate so valuable and extensive; her daughter’s dowry was therefore one of the best in the province. Plainly annoyed by Octávio’s indifference, she drew his attention by asking him slyly whether the persistent rumor that he was engaged to Eva was true...

All this had to be repeated and shouted a great deal, because the noise of the train and the crying of the child, who wanted milk, made it impossible to hear clearly.

Recognizing in the widow a subtle maneuver to entangle him, Octávio decided to be frank and cut off at the root any hope she might still entertain of having him as a son-in-law. So, quite calmly, while the displeased comendador muttered between his teeth, he folded his newspaper and replied:

“It isn’t true that I’m engaged to Eva. I would be if she hadn’t refused my proposal... She was unyielding! I must make the best of it...”

The widow, deeply disappointed, looked at Comendador Medeiros as though asking for an explanation; but the planter was wheezing thunderously in a great fit of coughing, as if his son’s words had stuck in his throat.

Sinhá adjusted the bow of her veil while Noemia confirmed her brother’s statement:

“It’s true. Octávio asked Eva to marry him and she refused. But I still hope she’ll change her mind!

“I’m so fond of her...”

Sinhá gave a faint smile and began brushing the biscuit crumbs from her dress with the tip of her handkerchief.

A few minutes later they reached Campinas.

The farewells were hurried; Antunes’s sister and niece soon disappeared into the crowd filling the station.

The Medeiros family took the Mogyana train. The comendador was out of temper, smoking one cigarette after another. His wife watched him fearfully, and when Noemia spoke almost in a whisper about Sinhá’s disappointment, she merely exclaimed, slowly and languidly:

“Poor thing!”

The other family entered the same carriage.

The rest of the journey went well. After drinking milk and smearing herself with sweets, the little girl fell asleep. The nurse dozed too, the mother stared vacantly into the air with her large green eyes, and the father continued smoothing the white cotton sock over his foot.

The Medeiros family was equally silent. Two passengers who had got on at Campinas did a great deal of talking, discussing the latest elections. They were two politicians, one a Liberal and the other a Republican, who argued with great heat, firing volleys of phrases with which each tried to crush the other.

Since the Republican Party had made a fine showing at the polls, the Liberal passenger concealed his resentment beneath a lofty contempt and an affected condescension that only exasperated his opponent further. Whenever the Republican exclaimed jubilantly:

“We have the majority! Long live the Republic!”

The Liberal smiled pityingly and murmured in a voice made unsteady by anger:

“Next year you’ll see what a thrashing you get!”

This dispute exasperated Comendador Medeiros still more! An old Conservative, firmly attached to his opinions, he longed to intervene and hurl at his political opponents every stone his rusty eloquence could supply. But he restrained himself, angrily biting his cigarette and consigning both politics and his son’s almost boorish frankness before Antunes’s sister and Sinhá herself to every devil in hell. Idiot! he thought. I shouldn’t wonder if he really means to marry that fool Eva!

It was drizzling when they reached Casa Branca. Clouds were gathering in great dark masses, and a gentle breeze faintly stirred the leaves of the trees.

Young Trigueiros, warned by telegram, was waiting for the family at the station. He stood among a group of young men, listening to what the others were saying, his thin pale lips parted in a cold, expressionless smile.

“Hasn’t Nicota come?” asked the comendador as he shook his son-in-law’s hand.

“She’s waiting at the estate...”

“Is she well?”

“Mm... She’s been feeling rather strange...”

“Then there’s news...”

“Exactly.”

After so categorical an answer there could be no doubt: Nicota was going to make him a grandfather. Medeiros received the news without excitement, perhaps even with a certain displeasure. All his family’s affection seemed to be slipping away from him! Octávio wounded him deeply by demolishing a plan he had cherished lovingly for so many years. Noemia, too, rebelled against his will, though she pretended to be resigned and humble. His wife’s respect for him came very close to fear; something in her obedience reminded him of a tamed animal before its trainer.

The comendador blamed all these evils on—the times!

Ah, how much happier heads of families had been only twenty years ago! They steered their boat at will—to the right, to the left, forward or backward—without a remark, a word, a complaint, or an appeal from anyone aboard. A father married off his sons and daughters as he chose, fitting them into his own family among the richest cousins; at thirteen the girls went to their new homes, believing themselves very happy, compliant and passive. Much the same happened to the boys, though they did, after all, always enjoy a little more freedom. Love! That word alone made the people of São Paulo shudder, as if it were synonymous with degradation and depravity!

The years had passed, and rapidly, in an almost incomprehensible evolution, the minds of the young had rebelled against the established laws to the point of wanting to act for themselves! And now...

The comendador was brooding over the follies of the present day when young Trigueiros pushed him into a large, heavy carriage in which he had already settled the rest of the family.

*

Young Trigueiros’s plantation was nearby and the road magnificent. As they went he told the family the names of the estates they passed; suddenly, turning to his father-in-law, he exclaimed:

“Franco’s people are arriving this afternoon... They’ll be having supper at our house...”

Noemia shuddered and pressed her face to the carriage window to hide the tears rising in her eyes.

The rain fell fine as though sifted. They were crossing an immense open field where, in the distance, eight or ten small tents of coarse cloth stood out, some white, others brown, some covered in patches, set a little apart from one another.

These were the dwellings of people with leprosy.

That sad, wandering village brought a note of desolation to the broad plain, dimly lit by a gray day.

Poor Noemia imagined that no sunbeam would ever play around those tents, that the grass of those meadows would always be as it was now—waterlogged, without freshness or fragrance—and that the great melancholy flooding the landscape at that moment would hang over it forever.

Inside those wretched tents, carefully closed against the damp weather, filthy, mutilated, misshapen bodies writhed in the most agonizing contortions, covered with sores, decay, and pus! Parents and children lived gazing at one another, watching their features disappear day by day, eaten away and made hideous, their hair growing coarse, stiff, and sparse under the ravages wrought every instant by relentless, invincible leprosy!

The carriage moved on, but the field was long and open, and Noemia did not lose sight of the little tents. She looked at them absentmindedly. Though gentle and kindhearted, she was not thinking then of the misery of those people, cut off from family, love, society, and joy. She was thinking only, selfishly, of her own unhappiness and of the inevitable meeting with the bridegroom proposed for her.

Through the carriage windows and the increasingly frequent raindrops she watched, with the same indifference, one of the inhabitants of the tents hurrying home from town, where he had been begging. He rode a thin old horse that stumbled along despite the repeated strokes with which its rider lashed it, nervously flicking a green switch.

The unfortunate leper was hideous to behold! His nose was gone, his lips were drawn back by scars, his hands wrapped in rags, his feet likewise wound in long strips of dirty cloth; stiff strands of hair showed at the nape of his neck through an opening in the red calico kerchief tied around his head beneath a very faded felt hat.

Behind him, across the horse’s rump, lay the sapicuá,^25-1 its two pouches full of provisions poured into them by the charitable hands of townspeople. A tin mug hung by its handle from the cord of the bag, dancing from side to side with the animal’s disjointed movements, while inside the sapicuá a spoon and a metal plate clinked together.

No leper ever goes down to the settlements on Saturdays without taking his trens, as household and personal utensils are called in the province.

When they ask for a mouthful of water to quench their thirst or a bowl of soup to satisfy their hunger, these repellent creatures hold out the plate and mug they carry, so that their loathsome lips will not touch the glasses and dishes of fortunate, healthy people. They always come prepared on these sad pilgrimages, displaying their mutilated bodies and repulsive faces to arouse pity. Awareness of the disease that eats away at them, often driving them from their own families, makes them gloomy, irritable, and bitter. They are convicts without a crime, without remorse, dragging through a painful and perpetual expiation an error of nature, so holy to some and so barbarous to others!

These unhappy people flee the towns, where the municipal authorities persecute and expel them, and they have a real horror of hospitals, where they find nothing to comfort or encourage them. So they pitch their frail cloth dwellings in the solitude of the fields. There they can live, for a few days at least, in isolation, unknown to everyone. There, without humiliation, they can drink from the spring the clear, pure water that runs through the velvety moss of the stones in a stream that neither stops at the touch of their swollen lips nor denies them its coolness. There no eyes regard them with pity or disgust, flowers perfume their ulcerated feet, and the stars shine like a gentle blessing over their leprous heads. But... Saturday comes, the day set apart for almsgiving, and down they go in groups to a town where they will not be rounded up for the asylums, facing every humiliation, from begging in the name of the good God who nevertheless denies them happiness, to receiving a copper coin flung from a distance into their hats for fear of contact.

The carriage moved slowly onward, its wheels sinking deep into the soft ground. The wretched horseman fell behind, drawing his neck into the collar of his greasy coat. Farther on, the carriage passed a group of four such unfortunates, who also shrank from the rain, hurrying their animals, almost as diseased as their owners, urging them along in hoarse, nasal voices.

But the field was vast, and the little tents were still far away, half concealed in the grayness of the overcast day. Raindrops ran down the carriage windows like heavy tears, and the vehicle dragged painfully over the wet, yielding earth.

Noemia, her eyes still fixed on the distant tents and the flooded field, kept thinking... that this very day she would shake the hand of the man intended for her, whom she detested!

Young Trigueiros’s plantation was well situated on a hilltop swept by pure air, surrounded by great dark woods that gave it a wholesome, wild fragrance. Its owner had christened it with the simple, unassuming diminutive Sertãozinho. When the carriage carrying the Medeiros family stopped before the main house—a yellow building with a wooden pretório^26-1 painted the same color and scarlet trim—Nicota came to the steps, showing sincere pleasure in one of her rare smiles.

They went inside and toured the whole house: the porch, the men’s sitting room, the dining room, the bedrooms, and the vast earthen-floored kitchen. Besides the large stove, one corner contained a tacuruba: three stones surrounding a crackling bed of red embers and supporting an enormous copper pan full of guava paste, still soft and bubbling. A fat black woman stirred it from a distance, holding the long shaft of the cuypeva^26-2 by its end.

Nicota was preparing a sumptuous supper.

Besides the Francos, they expected other guests. She already had everything in order—she had become a capable mistress of the household. Farsighted and energetic, while the family rested from its journey she went back and forth to the pantry, emptied preserves from the arimbás^26-3 into serving dishes, ordered the cows milked so that the milk could be served for dessert in a bulging tureen, and insisted that the hominy be thoroughly cooked and the caramelized egg sweet properly made. In the midst of these preparations she received word that the Francos would not come until the following day.

When Noemia heard this she sighed with relief: her moment of torture had been postponed.

Nicota seemed to attach no importance to her sister’s sadness or complaints. She set about giving orders for the following day’s breakfast, asking her husband to have an ox slaughtered. It was indispensable: she wanted to give the slaves a banquet to mark the inauguration of the machine, and immediately decided to get up very early to prepare several sweets.

Meanwhile the comendador and Octávio went down with young Trigueiros to the new building housing the machine that was about to be put into service.

Young Trigueiros had his plans and explained them to his father-in-law and brother-in-law.

Waiting for a good market price, he still had the previous year’s harvest in the storehouse; the coffee remained in its dried husks, unprocessed. He had decided to start the machine when the Francos were there; then the celebration would be complete.

Talking, the three men went to the end of the yard and leaned against a low gate leading to the pasture. The rain had stopped; sunlight broke through the clouds and gilded the very green, fresh grass, beaded with large drops of water. The cattle ran wildly, driven by the shouts of two black men who, standing some distance apart, swung leather lassos through the air with strength and skill to catch the ox. The condemned animal had twice kept its horns clear of the noose and was running furiously, bucking and charging first to the right and then to the left, foaming and nimble, its eyes blazing, its breath panting, its back rising or curving with the movements of its head, which seemed at one moment to lick the ground and at another reared desperately in proud defiance.

From the gate young Trigueiros shouted to one of the men:

“Now, Zezinho! Throw! Don’t be so slow!”

But Zezinho twisted rapidly backward to avoid the ox’s charges.

The struggle lasted a few moments, until the animal slipped on the wet ground and was caught. Then came the dry sound of the rope falling and tightening around its horns.

Zezinho, an agile young black boy, ran to open the gate, while his companion, sweating with exhaustion but wearing a thoroughly triumphant expression, led the unfortunate ox by the rope into the yard, where he tied it to a post and left it to rest.

Meanwhile Zezinho ran to fetch the axe and the large pointed knife. The ox waited quietly, gleaming with sweat.

“It’s a pity to kill such a fine animal!” Octávio said to his brother-in-law.

“He was rather wild, though—as vicious as the devil!” the plantation owner explained.

While they spoke, the black man who had roped the ox took his position in front of it and, raising his arms to judge an accurate blow, at last brought the blunt head of the axe down hard between its horns. The blow rang out with a heavy, dull sound, and the stunned ox fell sideways.

With a leap Zezinho untied the noose. The other slave crouched, lifted the animal’s head with one hand, and with the other drove the knife beneath its throat. Very red, hot blood spurted rapidly out, then spread in pools across the ground.

While the two black men slit the animal from end to end and pulled out its steaming intestines, Comendador Medeiros walked with his two companions toward the dam, a work to which young Trigueiros attached great importance.

On the lake, many wild ducks of varied colors turned the conversation to hunting. Only the day before, the plantation owner had brought back a fine paca and several partridges from the woods.

“Are there jaguars around here?”

“There are... but fewer^26-4 than in the backcountry. At my uncle’s estate in Jahu they often appear and attack the cattle.”

“I’ve witnessed a jaguar’s attack twice,” the comendador said. “Once on horses and once on oxen.”

And he remembered. It had happened before he married, when he acted as a sort of slave catcher for his father, sometimes spending days and days searching for fugitives. One afternoon, from the top of a hill, he had witnessed a strange sight, entirely new to him. On a vast plain below, stained a deep red by the setting sun, an enormous round mass, patched with light and dark, moved convulsively. Around that mass a great jaguar leaped and bounded, continually advancing and retreating, baring its teeth, its eyes burning with greed and rage.

Suddenly everything would become motionless... At some distance the jaguar crouched, digging its claws into the earth and preparing to spring; the black-and-white mass grew still too. Then a dreadful panting could be heard, as though fifty mouths were breathing at once with equal anxiety and effort. Everything around seemed to take part in the action. The field, the very trees, dark and silent, seemed to suffer as they watched that drama of nature unfold there over the sinewy filaments of their long roots!

It was during one of those moments of anxious suspense that he understood everything. That moving mass was made up of many horses, instinctively arranged in a circle, their heads together at the center, their haunches forming the circumference, defending themselves with kicks against the jaguar’s terrible attacks. He had fled in terror, leaving those furious combatants on the vast, silent plain reddened by the dying sun.

The other attack had made less impression on him. He had two companions whose presence gave him great courage; besides, the hour was different. It was morning, amid birdsong and the fresh scent of damp grass. This time the animals under attack were oxen, likewise forming a circle, but facing the opposite way—that is, with their heads toward the perimeter—and defending themselves with their horns.

The struggle had been majestically savage. Both sides possessed cunning and strength; their blazing looks met in aggressive hatred.

Advancing and retreating, the jaguar came and went, growing ever more furious and fierce, until suddenly it was caught on an ox’s horns and flung high into the air, landing on its back with a soft, dull thud. For a few moments they saw it waving its legs in the air, trying to rise, and then one of Medeiros’s friends shot it dead. The startled oxen scattered, racing wildly over the grass still wet with the night’s dew. And that was how it had ended!

When they returned to the house they found visitors: two neighboring farmers, Major Seabra and Porto, who had come to chat with young Trigueiros. He, however, remained in the dining room, where his mother-in-law was peeling quinces, Noemia was caressing the overseer’s daughter, and Nicota was filling two earthenware pitchers with molasses and honey.

The ladies looked tired from the journey, but they helped Nicota prepare for the celebration.

The men’s conversation soon turned to the great subject of the day: the abolitionists!

With extreme indignation, Seabra informed young Trigueiros that he had heard the judge himself openly declare that he would not permit the capture of runaway slaves!...

And they spat insults at the poor man in an immeasurable outpouring of bile!

Octávio moved away to smoke beside a window.

It was twilight, and the setting sun lit the landscape, still fresh from the rain. From the orchard came the milky, wild scent of fig trees. The everblooming roses, stripped by the wind, let fall their fresh petals, which spread a cheerful carpet over the ground.

In the yard the cattle returning from pasture to the pen gathered around the now cold blood of the animal killed a few hours before. Their great curved horns outlined against the air, their muzzles raised, grieving for the loss of their old companion, they lowed together mournfully...

It was six in the morning when Octávio woke and heard two countrymen talking beneath his bedroom window. One said:

“Mr. Romão’s already said Braz is the strongest of the lot of us...”

“Bah! Not on this earth! I’m the strongest of us all!”

“Mr. Zé Riba’s sent for a hired tough from outside, some fellow called Furctuoso!”

“Eh! There’ll be sparks flying!”

“Poor devils...”

“What poor devils?”

“The doctor’s people...”

“Was it Mr. Trigueiros sent for you?”

“No, it wasn’t. I’ve brought a message from Mr. Jucá, asking him to come and settle things. Trouble is, it’s getting late and I need to go.”

“Were you invited to the party?”

“Yes.”

“Who invited you?”

“Mr. Carlos de Lima. But I’m not going!”

“Well! That’s the same as throwing money away!”

“Yes... but I’m not going. When I see blood I turn so cowardly^27-1 I’m downright contemptible!”

Hearing Fructuoso’s name linked with those mysterious words, Octávio got up and opened the window, but the two countrymen had already moved away. One was talking to young Trigueiros, who listened with a darkened face; the other was disappearing through the courtyard doorway with a bundle of palm hearts on his shoulder.

Pondering the words he had just heard, Octávio thought he detected a concealed criminal purpose. The suspicion soon faded. What the devil! he thought. If they really intended such a thing, the hired men wouldn’t talk about it so freely, so loudly, and beside a window! What I must do is find Fructuoso, take a firm hold of him, and drag the whole truth out of his throat!

Octávio decided to seek him out that very day. When he entered the dining room he found his sister making fresh cheese, seated between two barrels, one of curdled milk and one of fresh.

Octávio began reading the newspapers while thinking about his interview with Fructuoso.

What dark truth would that infamous man reveal, who sold himself for crime as a prostitute sold herself for love?

Little by little the whole family gathered.

Conversation began. Young Trigueiros came in, preoccupied, his lips whitish and his cheeks earthy. Meanwhile Nicota, rosy and serene, squeezed the curds in a napkin quickly and firmly, then, when they were well drained, transferred them to the fresh milk in a pan.

She’s the happiest in the family, Octávio thought, watching her at her housewifely task, calm and untroubled.

They were occupied in this way when they heard the wheels of a light carriage: the Francos were arriving. Noemia shuddered and instinctively drew close to her mother, as though asking for mercy and support.

A few moments later Colonel Cerqueira Franco and his son entered the room.

The colonel was a robust old man, tall and stout, with a thick beard covering his whole chest, a heavy walk, and large hairy hands. His son, equally tall and strong, had a pleasing appearance, a calm gaze, and a child’s kind, happy smile upon a man’s thick lips.

The comendador presented him to Noemia, saying:

“Here is your bride!”

He blushed; without raising her eyes, she held out her cold, trembling hand.

There was a moment’s silence, which Colonel Cerqueira Franco hastened to break, speaking loudly with a certain familiarity and cheerfulness.

Turning to his son, he exclaimed:

“You’ve a very pretty bride. Now you must treat her well, do you hear?

“Pretty and... handy! She’s so delicate she must be very light!^27-2 She’d fit in a corner of Júlio’s pocket!”

Soon afterward a maid called them to breakfast.

Filling his plate with quiréra^27-3 and pork loin, Colonel Franco continued:

“Dona Nicota? Forgive me for being so free! But when I passed the waterfall at Pirassununga yesterday afternoon, they were hunting^27-4 fish, so I took it into my head to bring a dourado for your supper...” And immediately turning to young Trigueiros:

“Your place is very good... I once spent a night here in the neighborhood, at the house of... of a dark fellow, a chimbéva...”^27-5

“Prates?”

“That’s it!... Couldn’t remember his name. He was married to a girl from Limeira... Oh, what a firecracker of a woman!”

The others laughed; he went on:

“My feet are getting cold!^27-6 I reckon it’s because the dining room has a brick floor! Trigueiros? Don’t you people have a fire to warm yourselves?”

Yes, they replied. From time to time in winter they made a fire in the dining room between the hammocks; but now, in February, they never even thought of it!

Colonel Franco went on talking, now of his properties in various parts of the province, now of his son’s marriage, and so forth. Over dessert he said he had heard two passengers on the train heaping insults on the authorities of Casa Branca and saying that there would be a slave revolt in that town. That was the devil of it! Should he believe such a rumor? he asked, chewing with his full set of false teeth on the sweet pumpkin preserve, served in slices.

“He shouldn’t believe it,” young Trigueiros replied. “It was all stories told by castelleira people!”^27-7

“Well now... is that so?”

“Yes, indeed!”

“Good!”

All day long joy reigned among the slaves of Sertãozinho.

Octávio could not leave the family and indeed wished to devote his time to helping Noemia, for whom he had so far been unable to do anything.

With that purpose he led his sister’s fiancé into the men’s sitting room, empty at that moment. Júlio sat at one end of the sofa. Octávio drew up a chair opposite him and began:

“We must discuss a very delicate matter.

“Let me begin by asking your permission to put a question to you...”

“Certainly...”

“Have you looked closely at your fiancée’s eyes?”

Júlio Franco stared in astonishment at his future brother-in-law, then replied very candidly, unable to understand the reason for such a question:

“No...”

“If you had, you might have spared me the pain of saying this: Noemia’s eyes are red and swollen because she spends hours weeping! Marriage frightens her. Still very young, and with a somewhat changeable disposition, she fears she cannot make the man imposed on her as a husband happy. It is natural. Marriage without love seems to her a barbarous thing, something like a moral scaffold upon which she must sacrifice her whole life!

“She had never seen you; you are still a stranger to her! A little time spent together would, I’m certain, be enough to make her accept the arrangement with immense joy. If my father had consulted her wishes, none of what is happening would have occurred. He would have answered Colonel Cerqueira’s honorable attentions with a few perfectly understandable words of refusal. I believe the old friendship between them, as sensible and experienced men, would have remained as before. Anything else would be childish, don’t you think?”

Júlio Franco merely nodded. There was something uncertain and wandering in his gaze, as though it were seeking a point on which to settle.

Octávio concluded:

“These observations may seem late to you. But since I did not know you personally, I did not venture to write. I did work toward the same end within the family, without managing to shake my father’s resolution. Now I have nothing more to say. Whether I have made myself understood, I cannot tell; that is for you to say.”

“Perfectly,” Júlio replied, rising. “I leave early tomorrow for São Carlos, and from there I shall write to the comendador.” He offered Octávio his hand frankly; clasping it, Octávio felt with joy that he held the hand of an honorable man.

A great commotion could already be heard outside. Children were cheering, and young Trigueiros’s family—parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins, an endless number of people—had just arrived to witness the inauguration of the machine. Nicota and Noemia went to meet the ladies, who lowered their eyes shyly. They had never left the interior and silently twisted their handkerchiefs, looking at the floor. No conversation, idea, or wish could be communicated to them. Noemia moved busily from one to another: every attempt to entertain them was in vain! She showed albums of photographs and engravings; she fetched flowers, fruit, needlework, wasting her remarks and drying out her tongue to no purpose. At last, with nothing more cheerful to say and nothing more to show, she sat down, complaining through a yawn that the mosquitoes were ruining her skin.

She held out to one of the visitors her little white hand, marked with red dots. She was about to close her eyes drowsily when she had to open them wide in astonishment: the lady to whom she had languidly shown her hand uncurled herself and said timidly:

“It must be peririca.”

The spell was broken. From then on a phrase or two of the same sort floated to the surface of that torpor, until they all went down to the machine house.

There the white people and the slaves were gathered cheerfully together. Many coffee branches adorned the walls, and the sound of voices mingled with the sound of the machine.

A student from São Paulo, a relative of young Trigueiros, made a speech. Listening, Octávio thought of Azevedo, who, had he been there, would not have missed the opportunity to pour forth his rhetoric. Unfortunately he was far away, beside Eva, perhaps speaking to her with the sweet intimacy of an accepted suitor!

When the inaugural ceremony was over, they returned to the main house, where Nicota, helped by her mother, had a lavish dinner served.

At night the samba broke out in the yard. A stout, lame black man struck great resounding blows on a drum; an old man rattled the caracará, rolling his eyes merrily. Amid the din of the drumming, a great circle of black men and women sang and sang in a monotonous rhythm.

Now and then the melody seemed to cloud over and hide, only to emerge sweeter and more heartfelt, yet just as fleeting. The words were always repeated, without meaning, a mere pretext for musical modulations. The male attendants led off the lines, and the maids came out to dance, arms hanging, hips swaying.

Some old slaves, already infirm, watched from one side, recalling among themselves the splendors of the Congadas, an elaborate dance featuring a king in a trailing cloak of woolen cloth, twelve ministers in pink and blue blouses, and twelve little Congos in skirts and bodices, all wearing cardboard helmets decorated with ribbons and old plumes, or cotton caps.

“And the general?” one reminded them.

“Ah, the general!” sighed another.

The general entered the dance in uniform, covered in braid, wearing an extraordinarily extravagant tailcoat!

From the Congada they passed to memories of the vigor of the celebrated Cayapó dance. That was something! The black dancers wore locks of horsehair as wigs and, over ragged knitted shirts, many feathers and showy ornaments!

The poor old men recalled these things while the young women moved back and forth in tiny steps, now backward, now forward, with slow, rounded movements, repeating in a voice full of melancholy:

Petinga-a-á, petinga-a-á,
petinga-a-á, my love!

Octávio walked on the front veranda, sometimes watching the black dancers, sometimes leaning against the window of the card room and looking in at the game.

On one such occasion he heard a heated discussion. It concerned something serious: a local judge was being accused in insulting terms.

“The dog,” exclaimed a neighboring planter rich in both stupidity and money, “not only doesn’t catch runaway slaves, but shelters them besides!

“He’s so easy in his mind, and has so much nerve, he lets them walk in the street in broad daylight!”

“He’s positively defying us!” said another.

“As he wishes... so shall he have it,” pronounced a thin old man with a malicious look.

“Listen, his dismissal has already been requested.”

“That should have been done long ago!”

“There’s been plenty of discussion of that dismissal!” insinuated the same thin, malicious-eyed old man in a foreign accent.

“He shelters slaves so he’ll have someone to serve him,” said Dr. Azeredo, laying a trump on the table.

“That’s it! You’ve hit the mark!” replied the other player, taking the trump with a higher one.

“He has two there this very moment. One belongs to Moscoso over there.”

And he pointed with his lips toward a fat, beardless man who was rolling a cigarette, his very short arms resting on his rounded belly.

“He’s not keeping mine!” growled Moscoso, shaking his double chin.

“That’s what you say!” Colonel Trigueiros provoked him, clapping him on the shoulder. “But suppose he wants to! What can you do then?”

“What can I do? Well, really! A word’s a word! What was it we agreed?”

“Indeed,” the colonel replied with a smile, “they say you have certain plans...”

“Me?!... Oh, that’s for the Pereiras!”^27-8 And he glanced slyly sideways at Dr. Azeredo, who intervened:

“Well... well! It would be wiser to change the subject!”

“Leave the judge in peace!” said the old foreigner ironically, his cheeks flushed with excitement and beer.

“But the devil is asking for the gallows!” exclaimed a more heated voice.

“What an age of abuses!”

“No! He won’t play his tricks on us! He’ll be taught a lesson!”

“By dismissal,” the old man concluded.

“And by...”

Moscoso would have finished his sentence had the others not drowned it out by talking and coughing loudly.

Clearly, Octávio thought, these people are mad! He left the window and went to lie in the hammock at one end of the veranda, where he began smoking a Havana cigar, looking at the starry sky and listening to the black people’s song, so full of grace and melancholy.

Júlio Franco left Sertãozinho at five in the morning, leaving the colonel to make his excuses to the Medeiros family and young Trigueiros.

He had spent part of the night arguing with his father, who, on hearing him say, “I no longer wish to marry; I’ve decided to remain single,” put his hands to his head and demanded:

“What the devil! Why?”

“Because I can see perfectly well that Noemia Medeiros doesn’t like me!”

“What nonsense! What does a woman know about what’s good for her? Her father wants it, and that’s the end of it!”

“I don’t think so.”

“Stop this foolishness!...”

“This is a very serious matter...”

“Serious, indeed! You’re an idiot.”

The argument was long. Only after many hours did Júlio manage to calm the old man.

The colonel kept repeating:

“How am I to face these people?”

His son, however, would not abandon his intention, and the old man had to resign himself to the dismal role allotted to him.

At breakfast he called the comendador aside and, hesitating and nervous, told him everything.

The comendador did not reply. Pale with indignation, he turned his back and shut himself in his room. Octávio redoubled his attentions to the colonel and accompanied him to the station at noon.

Returning from the station, Octávio stopped at a shop selling hardware, haberdashery, crockery, and other goods. Half a dozen people were gathered there at that hour, holding their usual conclave, discussing politics and drinking coffee. He asked whether Mr. José Ribas was present or whether they could tell him where to find him.

The shopkeeper, a fat, dark, smiling fellow, came to the door and explained that José Ribas was not in town; but if Mr. Octávio Medeiros wished, he could send a message, since at that very moment he was packing axes, hoes, machetes, and pistols that Ribas had ordered.

“Come in... come in, and write at your ease,” the shopkeeper insisted.

Accepting the invitation, Octávio sat down at the desk.

A short distance away, a clerk in his shirtsleeves was packing the articles into a crate, calling them out aloud.

“One pistol... three axes... five hoes... two revolvers...”

At the counter another clerk, very neat, wrote and repeated: one pistol... three axes... and so on.

“What the devil does Ribas want with all that?” asked a thin man in a straw hat who was sitting in a corner joining in the talk.

“How should I know!... All I can say is that I’ve done a great deal of business lately.”

“Then it must be true after all?”

“What?”

“The slaves’ revolt...”

“So it seems... In any case, it’s well to be prepared.”

“Yes, José Ribas is quite right. If the slaves catch their masters defenseless...”

“God help us!”

At that moment a countryman boldly entered the shop and addressed the owner:

“I’ve come to borrow a machete from you...”

“I don’t lend; I sell.”

The countryman thought for a moment, then made up his mind:

“Well then, put it on Mr. Zé Riba’s account...”

“Very well. What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! My name’s Furctuoso da Cunha.”

While Fructuoso was being served, Octávio thanked the shopkeeper for his kindness and went outside to wait for the countryman whom a fortunate chance had brought to him.

The hired thug Fructuoso was short and thin, with small, penetrating eyes, thin lips, and flared nostrils.

Daring, he was the first to fling himself into danger. He knew no fear, delighted in the smell of blood, and sought occasions to spill it so that he could wet his hands in it voluptuously. Agile and cunning, he always escaped the clutches of the police; while the soldiers searched taverns, roads, and settlements for him, he laughed, lying on his belly in some unknown little backyard where he had improvised a cockpit, watching and urging on fighting cocks that tore out one another’s feathers and skin, drawing blood and blinding each other.

“Go on, speckled one! Attack!” he shouted, betting with other countrymen who squatted around him, counting the money tied in the corners of their handkerchiefs and squealing with rage or delight.

It was from this man’s mouth that Octávio hoped to hear words of truth, the sincere confession of a wrong, the revelation of an execrable name, and Eva’s salvation! But Fructuoso was loyal to his employers. His spirit, always open to evil and perversity with the greed of a starving tiger, rejected everything that was good or might contribute to good.

His thoughts flew through evil like a bat through darkness: unhindered, delighting in it.

Seeing him leave the hardware shop, Octávio called to him. Fructuoso approached, said he had recognized him, and walked beside him without showing the slightest uneasiness. They stopped at a deserted point in the street.

They stood between two garden walls. The blazing sun struck squarely on the uneven paving stones. Over one wall the tangled stems of a flowerless creeper leaned curiously into the street; the other bore no trace of vegetation. Along its top only a mass of broken glass could be seen, jutting up threateningly and glittering in the sun.

“Come,” Octávio began. “I already know you were the one who tried to kill me, and understand that I’m not angry with you for it. What I want to know is the name of the person who hired you. Who was it?”

Fructuoso smiled, then slowly passed a hand over his face.

“I don’t know... What’s the use of telling?”

“That’s my concern. Tell me how much you want for your secret.”

“Nothing. I don’t take money when I haven’t worked.”

“Very well. You’ll work for me afterward.”

The countryman looked him up and down and smiled again.

“Hmm... You, sir? Bah!”

“Yes, me! Listen...” And Octávio spoke at length, trying every means, from the gentlest to the most violent, to force the hired man to tell the truth.

Fructuoso, however, shut himself up in his obstinacy, and nothing could draw him out of it. At last, hearing Octávio name Antunes as a suspect, he burst into open laughter and said:

“You’re mistaken! Mr. Antunes is a fool at this sort of thing... All I’ll say is, it was a woman who arranged the job and paid us, not a man!”

“A lie!” Octávio exclaimed indignantly, realizing which woman the countryman meant.

“Well then,” the other replied placidly, “if you want, I can show you proof...”

“Bring it, and at once!” Octávio replied, holding out his hand.

“It’s not here! Wait for me in this very place late tomorrow afternoon. I’ll come and hand it over.”

“No! I’d rather fetch it today from José Ribas’s house.”

“How do you know I’m staying there?!”

“I know.”

“All right. But I’m not going back to the estate today...”

“Tomorrow, then...”

“At what time?”

“Seven in the morning.”

“Devil take it!... It’s settled! I’ll wait for you...”

And they parted.

Octávio went on in perplexity, thinking over the hired man’s words, seeing again his mobile, impenetrable face, the nervous blinking of his small malicious eyes, and the repeated movements of his restless, rabbitlike mouth. He decided to go to Ribas’s plantation that very afternoon.

Fructuoso might have deceived him... A man like that could not be trusted... He wanted to get possession that same afternoon of the document the countryman had offered. To his mind it would be a key to the intrigue, so tangled and obscure until then!

Before sunset he reached José Ribas’s plantation. There the overseer’s wife informed him, dryly and decisively, that no white man was at home; they were all staying in town!

“But Fructuoso?”

“What Fructuoso! Nobody’s coming here today! You’d better come back tomorrow...” And she turned her back on him.

“Ill-mannered woman!” Octávio muttered between his teeth as he went down the small flight of steps.

It was eight at night when he took the road to Sertãozinho.

“May I come in?” young Trigueiros asked in a shaken voice, knocking at Octávio’s bedroom door, where a light still burned.

“Of course!” the young man replied in astonishment, going to meet his brother-in-law.

It was past one in the morning. Through the open window came the damp air of a heavy, starless night. On the table, beside the candle and the open inkwell, lay a letter just addressed to Dr. Morton.

Young Trigueiros, very yellow, staggered in and dropped into a chair.

“What’s wrong?” Octávio asked in alarm.

Trigueiros tried to answer, but the words died on his lips in a poorly articulated, incomprehensible sound.

“Do you feel ill?” Octávio asked again, bending toward him with concern.

The other answered no with a gesture and an almost painful smile.

Several minutes passed in complete silence. The candle flame flickered; a night bird flew close past the window.

Trigueiros shuddered, drew nearer to his brother-in-law, and said, dragging his tongue so that his words were confused:

“I’ll tell you everything... But you must keep it secret... I knocked at your door because I’m afraid...”

“Afraid? Afraid of what?!”

Trigueiros glanced around the room and, passing his small, dry, dark hand through his hair, murmured:

“Listen...”

Again he stopped, as though someone were squeezing his throat.

Octávio tried to calm him, assuring him he could feel safe there.

His brother-in-law reflected, then continued in a barely audible voice:

“Many planters here in the district were furious with the judge because of the slaves he protected and sheltered...”

“I’ve heard that already...”

“Yes!... And since he would never give way either to pleas or to threats, they decided...”

Here Trigueiros swallowed hard and lowered his head with a dark, madman’s movement.

“Decided what?” Octávio asked curiously.

“To kill him!” Trigueiros replied, his voice strangled and his hair bristling.

Octávio straightened, let his hand fall heavily on his brother-in-law’s shoulder, and said in a harsh, vibrating tone:

“But you weren’t part of the plot?! Tell me!”

“I was...” murmured the other, almost on his knees.

Octávio remained silent in terrible astonishment, while Trigueiros continued murmuring with the profound humility of a man confessing:

“We agreed to gather tonight and go to the judge’s house to take the slaves he has there and... But I hadn’t the courage. I got down there at eleven and saw a crowd already gathered in Simões Rodrigues’s pasture, where we’d agreed to leave the horses... Then—I don’t know what came over me... but I pulled on the reins and hurried home... All the way I seemed to feel that whole crowd following me, dragging the judge... I came along the corridor like a drunkard, saw the light in your room, and knocked.”

Very yellow and nervous, Trigueiros now gave his words free rein. They tumbled out, compromising him, revealing the others’ names in an impetuous torrent.

Wanting to draw back, he kept going forward, gesticulating like a shipwrecked man struggling against a wave.

His earthy color deepened; his thin, delicate hands clenched, making the branching veins stand out like dark cords, and his eyebrows drew together or rose and fell, wrinkling his narrow forehead. He looked like a madman in the midst of a seizure. Now and then he stopped, imagining he heard a gunshot, and assumed a listening posture.

Seeing such agitation, Octávio no longer believed him. He thought him ill and advised him to rest.

To avoid frightening Nicota, he told him to stay there in his own bed and helped him undress. Trigueiros had become as docile as a child and let himself be moved without resisting or helping. Taking off his coat, Octávio saw a revolver and a new hunting knife at his waist, besides the knife he usually carried in the armhole of his waistcoat.

“What’s this?! You really were prepared for the attack!...”

And suddenly, remembering what he had heard in the hardware shop, he realized that the man before him was not a lunatic pursued by a vision but a guilty man tormented by remorse. Then, without pity, indignant and trembling with rage, he hurled a storm of reproaches at his brother-in-law.

Trigueiros stared with bulging eyes and could find no answer in his terror.

“We must warn the man and save him!” Octávio said.

“How?!” the other managed to say, a ray of hope lighting his eyes.

“How... I don’t know. I’ll think of something on the way!”

The horse on which Trigueiros had come was still saddled, its reins tied to a large ring by the door. Octávio untied the knots made by Trigueiros’s nervous hand, mounted, and galloped away.

Young Trigueiros was left alone. He felt something like a snake of snow running down his spine and shrank into himself. His eyes opened very wide, fixed on the door that stood open onto the black emptiness of the corridor. He wanted to close that door into darkness and could not move!

He longed to light the room brightly, hear friendly voices, feel the reassuring stir of the household, and see the sunlight! That silence and darkness terrified him. His eyes searched anxiously, now toward the window, now toward the door, expecting and fearing that the dead man’s head would appear in either opening, sinister and dreadful. Standing in the middle of the room, he feared someone might steal behind him, and retreated in terror until his back touched the cold whitewashed wall. But on either side the dark holes of the window and doorway filled him with dread, and he cocked his revolver, determined to defend himself against the phantoms his excited imagination conjured up!

There was a brief moment of relief! A child cried somewhere inside the house. As long as that weak childish voice lasted—helpless, but human after all—a great comfort clothed his grown man’s soul!

Unfortunately the child was soon soothed, and everything fell back into the former profound stillness. The night breeze grew damper and damper, bringing from the fields the fresh scent of grass and the scattered, indecipherable sounds of animals and vegetation.

Through Trigueiros’s disordered mind whirled, again and again, every scene he had witnessed since the day a group of friends came to invite him to the great revenge!

It had happened right there at Sertãozinho! Dr. Azeredo and five other friends were saying every evil thing about the judge, swearing they would silence him once and for all. In low voices they discussed the man’s politics and character, asking for the opinion and assistance of Trigueiros, who took refuge in evasions, not knowing which side to choose!

The proposed action repelled him; he even ventured a “but...” The others, however, fell upon him with forceful words oozing indignation, twisting the law, crushing morality, stifling whatever good their hearts contained, opening the valve only to black, infectious, corrosive, filthy hatred, which burst out in torrents, sweeping away in its flood the few little flowers of compassionate feeling.

“All the planters are against him. Consider whether you want to be the only sentimental weakling!” Azeredo exclaimed.

“Come along!” another insisted. “A man’s a man!”

Trigueiros writhed and mumbled, but, not knowing how to argue with Azeredo and fearing above all to be called a coward, he agreed to everything, though with great reluctance. From that moment they entangled him in a web of arrangements! They buried him in the affair, compromised him. The point was to make up the numbers, spreading responsibility for the deed over a wide circle. Thus they held meetings, devised intrigues, and spread terrifying rumors through the town, cunningly naming a fixed date for a slave uprising and diverting every suspicion that it would be they—the white men, the rich, the masters, the property owners—who would roam the streets with revolvers in their hands, breaking into houses and shattering the happiness of an honest, poor family. The timid townspeople would cower between their sheets, leaving the black people outside to shout as much as they liked!

Trigueiros followed all the plans, openmouthed and frightened, sometimes trying to escape these arrangements, but always obeying.

The day appointed for the attack arrived. Trigueiros went without food; he had no appetite, a bitter taste in his mouth, and a nervous, clammy chill ran over his body. As night approached, his discomfort grew. He wanted to tell his brother-in-law and father-in-law everything, and even went to look for them for that purpose; but his courage failed, and, crushed by the fear of a grave and just rebuke, he compromised with his conscience. He decided not to attend and was holding to that intention when one of Azeredo’s hired men came with another reminder from his employer, urgently enjoining him not to fail them.

“Be a man!” his friend repeated in his refrain. “Stand by us in danger as you have stood by us in good times!”

Trigueiros thought duty and loyalty required him to join the others. At eleven that night he mounted his horse and set off.

The starless sky seemed deeper and vaster; the trees, barely stirred by the faint summer breeze, lazily moved their dark branches. Nature, beautiful and serene, prompted calm thoughts, ideas of exquisite tranquility and sweetness. It was midnight when Trigueiros reached Simões Rodrigues’s pasture. Conflicting thoughts assailed him more forcefully: he saw the condemned man covered in blood, heard public opinion afterward scourging his name, splashed with mud, and in procession came prison, interrogation... his family’s contempt and the impossibility of continuing to live there!

About two hundred people were already in the pasture. A low murmur of voices could be heard, and now and then the dry noise of a weapon being readied. Then, without knowing why, like an automaton, Trigueiros turned his horse and galloped home. He felt they were pursuing him, jeering at him, calling repeatedly, “Weakling! Coward!” He tried to stop, to rejoin his companions, but encountered the vision of the dead man, and the color of blood drove him out of his mind. He felt the need to take refuge in someone.

He would wake his wife, ask her to defend him, beg for a protection he had never imagined he would owe her. He hurried into the house and fell on the steps; he got up shivering, chilled through with fear, feeling Azeredo behind him saying mockingly, “Weakling! Coward! Traitor!” Then he saw the light in Octávio’s room, leaned against the door almost fainting, and knocked.

Dawn was breaking when Octávio reached town. Curious heads appeared at half-open windows. Here and there someone bolder ventured across the street, or even went as far as the place where a dreadful scene of bloodshed had occurred.

A few minutes later Octávio stopped before the judge’s house.

On the opposite pavement a few people were discussing the appalling affair, looking at the windows without glass, the walls pitted by the attackers’ bullets and stones, the broken door fallen inward, revealing the dark corridor down which, two hours before, the savage, bloodthirsty crowd of murderers had rushed. Among the onlookers was the hardware merchant, who, seeing Octávio dismount, hurried across the street to him.

“What a tragedy, my friend, and what a disgrace! What will people elsewhere say when they hear of this! And to think it was I—I!—who supplied all these people with the instruments of the crime!”

“Then it’s all over, is it?”

“All over!”

Octávio shuddered. The merchant continued:

“This is what happened: I woke at four to the sound of shots and shouting. I called the boy and sent him to find out what it was... The boy saw everything... He came and told me, so I came here and found some friends already here, and they told me the same... A tragedy! What will they say about us elsewhere! Would you like to go in? Come... I’ve been inside already. Come in, look, come with me!”

“But... can we just go in like that?... What about the authorities?”

“Why, it’s the authority himself who’s dead!”

“Very well, let’s go in.”

Together they crossed the whole house, among broken, scattered, overturned furniture, bloodstains, and shards of glass.

Stretched out in the yard beneath one of the windows lay the judge’s corpse, stiff, mutilated, hideous!

Groups of curious people talked in the yard before the murdered man; some of humbler station peered over the wall.

The merchant explained:

“Just look! How many blows the poor man took! And some were struck by his own relatives!”

At a gesture of disbelief from Octávio, he added:

“Indeed! There were many planters from his family in the crowd...”

And he named several.

“Look, that young man over there witnessed everything... Mr. Jucá! Would you be so kind as to come here?”

Mr. Jucá approached. He was still quite young, intelligent, with an alert gaze, the son of a planter from Mogy das Cruzes, and was looking for an estate in the district.

A moment later Octávio was listening to a brief account of the events. At his feet, hideous, covered with bruises and clotted blood, lay the judge’s body in a strip of shadow cast by the roof. The group of commentators grew: no longer one man telling the story, but two, four, five, ten! All affirmed the same thing:

At four in the morning, somewhere between a hundred-odd and two hundred people had come up from Simões Rodrigues’s pasture, gathered together and armed. Collecting a few more friends along the way, they reached the judge’s house and surrounded it. Many forced their way in at the back, firing shots, breaking down doors, and shouting, “Send our slaves out here! Let the abolitionists show themselves!”

Finding himself threatened, the judge tried to flee and urged his wife to save herself and the children... The poor woman jumped from a window; her husband followed her example, but unfortunately his murderers were already waiting below in the yard. Then the dark work of the crime began in all its ferocity! They beat, mutilated, and strangled their victim, paying no heed to the pleas of his unhappy wife, who dragged herself about on her knees, imploring mercy!

Her anguished voice, distorted by terror and tears, was joined by the sweet, weeping voice of an innocent little daughter.

But the assassins answered them with insults, redoubling their blows in their bloody fury. Only when they saw everything reduced to wreckage, ruin, blood, shame, and irreparable sorrow did they leave, happy and satisfied with their work.

Dawn broke serenely. Octávio had listened to all this with deep emotion, his eyes fixed on the dead man.

“What’s extraordinary,” one man said, “is that the police never appeared!”

“No wonder!” another exclaimed ironically. “At the first shots the police chief’s first deputy went to the jail and forbade the guard to leave!”

“Oh!”

“How?”

“He told the sergeant commanding the detachment that the crowd was very large, that the jail held many prisoners, and that he gave the order because he, the deputy, had been appointed police chief!”

“The devil!”

“What are you telling me, man!”

“The truth.”

They exclaimed indignantly, and several local people laid bare and discussed the deputy’s life history.

The sunlight was drawing nearer, already licking the corpse’s feet. Octávio mechanically held out his hand to the merchant and was about to leave when he heard someone say:

“That blow on the head was dealt by José Ribas’s hired man... a fellow called Fructuoso...”

“Exactly!” another confirmed. “And what a devil of a strong fellow, eh!”

“He wasn’t content with killing. He stole too. I saw him jump through the window.”

“So did I... with some papers...”

“What a disgrace!” murmured the merchant, shaking his head sadly. “What will people elsewhere say about us!”

That preoccupation finally exhausted Octávio’s patience. Fructuoso’s name had shaken him. Casting one last compassionate look at the dead man, he left.

He was terribly affected. Everything there seemed vile to him—people and things alike. The place disgusted him; he looked at the houses as though every one were a den of murderers, and in every corner of the landscape, however serene and moving, he seemed to discern a dark trace of conspiracy and intrigue. Mounting, he galloped along the road to Sertãozinho, but had to stop almost at once: his brother-in-law’s attendant was approaching and said he was going to fetch a doctor.

“The young master’s like a dead man! He hasn’t any strength^31-1 left at all!”

“Is my father at home?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Colonel Ribeiro?”

“He’s there too!”

“Good.”

Instead of going home, Octávio took the road to José Ribas’s estate. His presence might aggravate his sister’s husband’s condition; besides, it was urgent to wrest the promised proof from the accursed Fructuoso. It repelled him to have to ask that man for a word upon which all his future happiness would rest. And what trust could he place in such a word? To let those lying, impure lips pronounce Eva’s dear name was already a desecration! But it had to be done. And if Fructuoso named her as the author of that baseness, would he believe him? Would he stop his mouth and call him a scoundrel? He would descend to violence; however often he heard “It was Eva, Eva!” repeated, he would say, “No, no, and no!” He thought of all this and kept galloping toward José Ribas’s plantation.

In everyone’s life, even the most sensible person’s, there are moments of madness when one inevitably falls into the most absurd contradictions! Reason tells us:

“It’s useless! Don’t do it!” But deep within, a mysterious doubt arises, a “Who knows?” that drives us to act even against our will!

That was what was happening to Octávio. Reaching José Ribas’s house, he saw at a window the woman he had spoken to the previous day, the estate’s housekeeper.

“Can I see Fructuoso today?” the young man asked.

“Bah, goodness! Not a chance! You’re unlucky!”^31-2

“Why?”

“Because you’re hunting^31-3 for him for nothing!”

“Has he gone away already?!”

“Yes indeed! Since early this morning.”

“And when will he return?”

“He’s not coming back. All that one wants is to keep roaming about!”

“But did he say he wouldn’t return? Are you certain?”

“He didn’t say, but we saw. He bundled his things up anyhow, spoke to Mr. Zé, and left!”

Bewildered, Octávio cursed his own naïveté. Fructuoso had deceived him twice: by claiming to possess proof he did not have, and by appointing a meeting at an hour when he already intended to be far away! Where could the countryman have gone?

And why look for him? He would be deceived again—twice, ten times, twenty—and mocked as often! It was a lesson. Poor Eva! Through what a world of baseness they dragged her name!

When Octávio entered the house, he asked his sister about the patient.

“He’s very restless.^31-4 The doctor says it’s an attack affecting his head. Come and see...”

Trigueiros was scratching his legs, burned by mustard poultices, twisting his mouth and tossing about. On seeing his brother-in-law he began speaking confusedly:

“I’m not an accomplice! I haven’t killed anyone! I swear! I swear! I’m incapable of such infamy!”

The doctor at his bedside tried to calm him. In the corridor the rustling skirts of the women could be heard as they came and went on tiptoe.

That afternoon Trigueiros fell into a restorative sleep.

A few days later the doctor advised removing the patient from the place, taking him somewhere else, at least temporarily.

The Medeiros family therefore decided to return to Santa Genoveva with Nicota and the invalid. Like a simpleton, he made no objection; he let them move him without protest.

Terror had spread throughout the town. Nothing was spoken of but the crime; blood was seen on every hand, lies in every face. Families fled in fear and horror; the place grew deserted.

While his parents and sisters went directly to the station, Octávio went to say goodbye to the shopkeeper, who had always shown him particular attention. He found him surrounded by half a dozen men who were drinking his coffee and asking questions.

“In any case, it was a lesson,” one said.

“Don’t you think an example like that was badly needed?” another asked, turning to the owner.

And the latter answered emphatically:

“Certainly! From now on those fellows who fish in troubled waters will have to be more careful...”

Octávio left in disgust. The merchant understood and caught up with him at the first corner. There, after looking cautiously from side to side, he said in a low, breathy voice:

“You understand... If I contradict these people’s opinions, I’ll have to close the shop! The planters are the ones who support us!”

Octávio answered evasively and continued on his way, mentally repeating the phrase he had so often heard that same man utter with indignant emphasis:

“Disgraceful! What will people elsewhere say about us!”

When the Medeiros family reached Santa Genoveva, the overseer, very yellow and embarrassed, said:

“We’ve no people left!”

The comendador did not understand and made him repeat the words.

“What are you talking about, man?”

“It wasn’t my fault...” the overseer murmured shamefacedly. “Those damned slaves really are the devil!”

“Explain yourself!” the comendador shouted angrily.

Very humbly, the employee told him that the slaves had taken advantage of their owners’ absence to flee en masse.

“Where to?!”

The overseer could not answer. He lowered his head, shrugging almost imperceptibly.

This was what had happened:

Two days before, under cover of darkness, all the slaves of Santa Genoveva had set out for the Serra do Cubatão, the mysterious refuge of so many unfortunates. The road was long and painful, and the first hours of hurried marching were counted by the heart’s frantic beats!

The ragged battalion, as taciturn as though made up of the children of Cain, moved in silence, cutting through the night’s darkness with long, uneven strides. The exhausted panting of more than a hundred people could be heard in one great heaving breath. Not a word, not a complaint, not a groan! Crushing the dry grass beneath their flat, calloused feet, the black fugitives went on with burning eyes and half-open mouths, their faces filled with pain and hatred, as though they were walking toward the scaffold instead of freedom!

Mothers wrapped their small children in torn shawls, leaving their bare, whip-marked shoulders exposed to the cold night air, their breasts in the children’s mouths to keep them from crying. These obscure heroines spent their strength without complaint, walking on despite their burdens, despite the darkness, despite their fear, their ears alert, their lips dry, their sobs held in their throats! Fathers led the older children by the hand; in the first hours they had skipped along, then begun to faint... Some old people who had refused to let their companions leave without them dragged themselves onward, opened their trembling hands, let their supporting sticks fall to the ground, and sank to their knees, their eyes full of tears and their lips full of prayers!

Seeking the most shadowed byways, heeding neither hunger nor weariness, these people crossed stony paths and paths carpeted with vegetation, drawing blood from flesh already so bruised by labor and tormenting their souls with the hallucinations of terror!

Beyond the halfway point, how many were missing! Many old people and children had been left scattered and dead in the forest, food for wild beasts and flocks of carrion birds!

Day rose and night fell without joy coming to beat its white wings above those black brows! Always the fear of pursuit, the dread of tomorrow, of return to the master’s house, of punishment, shame, and death!

Reaching the wide, deep Tietê and imagining they heard soldiers, two mothers, in an incomprehensible impulse, threw their little children into the river and ran frantically along the bank with their arms in the air, until they fell face down, striking their chests and faces against the scrub that wounded them. Beneath those beautiful trees lay the bodies of the defeated, and on the tender leaves of the low-growing plants lay the blood of the others, who panted, suffered, and passed on!

Meanwhile, because of all this, the overseer at Santa Genoveva endured the formidable barrage of insults his employer hurled at him. At last Comendador Medeiros exclaimed in exasperation:

“This is all the work of that António Bento! Damn it! What they did to that devil of a judge is what they ought to do to all that scum who lead our slaves astray!”^32-1

And after a pause:

“Then nobody’s left?!”

“Only Joaquina, and Joanna, who’s dying...”

“Only those worn-out old black women!”

“It’s a good thing you took Saturnino, or you’d have lost him too...” the employee ventured timidly.

Some time later, a little bolder, the overseer said consolingly that Gusmão had likewise lost all his slaves. Those had gone to Campo Limpo, where the stationmaster, in agreement with the train conductor, had hurried them into the second-class carriages...

“Rabble! Devil’s scum!” the comendador roared, crimson with rage.

Octávio went down to see his nurse. Aunt Joaquina, the soap maker, sat on the threshold of the slave quarters, her thin elbows planted on her legs, her face hidden in her hands. Hearing footsteps, she raised her red, wet eyes.

“What’s the matter, Joaquina? Were you crying?”

“Yes, sir...” the old woman answered with a sigh.

“Mamã is worse, I know.”

“Ah, young master! Aunt Joanna’s doing poorly... I’m crying because Jacintho went off with all the others... And now what’s to happen when Aunt Joanna asks for him?”

“Everything will be arranged. Don’t worry.” And Octávio, moved by poor Joaquina’s kindness, entered his nurse’s quarters.

At the back of a large, dark room, with damp oozing from the walls and floor, poor mamã lay on a mat over the boards of her bed, among old rags of woolen cloth and coarse cotton. A smell of filth and mold pervaded the air.

Flies buzzed and hovered over the dying woman, who no longer felt them. Her white woolly hair made a halo around her narrow, wrinkled forehead; the black of her face had become a yellowish chestnut color; her withered lips sank into her mouth, making her sharply pointed chin stand out. Her nose had grown thin and taken on the regular shape of a white person’s nose, with the translucence of wax; her eyes, open and still, were gradually being covered by a whitish mist that dimmed their light.

“Just look! Aunt Joanna’s grown so small she’d fit in a little xicáca!^33-1 She’s just like a child!” And Joaquina wept as she pulled the remnants of a gray blanket off her companion’s body.

Indeed, the paralyzed woman’s body had wasted until its bulk was greatly reduced. Her exceedingly thin arms lay on the mat; her hands resembled dry, shriveled spiders.

Through the opening of her calico jacket could be seen her wrinkled, flaccid breasts, hanging like two empty little bags—the very breasts she had once put, fruitful and full, so often into little Octávio’s thirsty mouth!

“Mamã...” he murmured, bending to caress her. “Mamã! It’s me, Octávio. I’m here...” And he took her hand tenderly.

The old woman could not move, but her contracted lips relaxed: she had heard her son’s voice. He repeated:

“Mamã... mamã!”

And the mist in her eyes began to pass, dissolving like a cloud in the sun’s rays. She could not speak, but her gaze was now clear, expressive, sweet, happy: a grateful gaze, tender and full of longing, flooding him with affection and love.

“Mamã... poor mamã!...” Octávio repeated, moved and trembling. And her eyes answered him: “Thank you for your pity! I was waiting for you before I died!”

It was as though her soul, her life, had gone out through her eyes. Joanna breathed her last.

The white son who had always given her such pride had sweetened her passing. The absence of Jacintho, her own son, born of her body, was fully compensated. Not a glance in search of him! She forgot him as though she had guessed his abandonment! Octávio was her god; Octávio was her love.

From childhood Jacintho had been the one passed over. Let the black son roll about naked, hungry, and dirty, provided the white son enjoyed plenty of good milk, the softness of cambric, and the fragrance of cleanliness!

This was common among enslaved women. From the fields, their hands calloused by the hoe, they went to the woman in childbirth’s room, receiving in hands bruised by punishment and labor the cherished, satiny, rosy little body of the child they were to nurse.

From then on their attention, their care, their affection converged on the white child. Let the black one die... one unfortunate less. And that was what happened most of the time!

However extraordinary and improbable it may seem, that is how it was. The sweetness of maternal love, a love all the more full of sacrifice the more intense it is, did not stir the feeling in their souls, or was stifled by the voice of pride! Yet it is reasonable to believe that the chief cause of this anomaly was the misery of their condition!

It was even a good thing for the children to die small, without knowing the bitterness to which they were destined!

Poor Joanna had been one of these women. She had borne many children and nursed several white ones. From time to time her master lent her to one family or another, as though she were a thing or an inferior animal. She did not rebel... Had she not been born a slave? And she gave her blood to other people’s children while her own died of hunger!

Octávio had been the last, and of them all the only one who, until he was ten, still kissed her, hanging around her neck. The others looked down on her with a white person’s arrogance and very rarely sought her out. Besides, because she had remained at home, Jacintho had not shared his siblings’ fate; one companion or another would occasionally give him broth or change his little shirt, comforting him with something dry.

How distant that time was! Here now, shriveled, cold, mummified among torn cloths upon a damp mat, lay the stout mamã of former days, the active, energetic Joanna!

Joaquina lit a candle she had prudently kept for this moment and placed it at the corpse’s feet. Its flame, stirred by no breeze, stood yellow and motionless against the dark wall, casting a narrow, pale streak on the tattered gray blanket.

“I never imagined Aunt Joanna would die today!” the dead woman’s companion said tearfully, with difficulty crossing her hands upon her chest. “Poor thing!”

Through the dark, damp room spread the sad, cold smell of death...

Octávio, his eyes brimming with tears, looked silently at poor mamã and brushed away the flies.

For a month life passed monotonously at Santa Genoveva. Young Trigueiros convalesced slowly, remaining nervous and weak. The comendador inquired after the slaves’ whereabouts, visited Antunes more frequently, and railed against the incompetence of the authorities.

The women sewed and were busier with household tasks, teaching Italian maids newly arrived from their own country, with whom they could not make themselves understood at all. Noemia laughed at the misunderstandings between her mother and the servants and, with the carefree spirit of her fifteen years, effortlessly let the sweet impressions of her first love fade.

Octávio sought in work a distraction he could not find. He drew maps, made plans, measured land, calculated sums, jumped from one project to another, finding them all useless, convincing himself he was wasting time, his mind obsessed with his love for Eva.

He returned to Antunes’s plantation to ask after Fructuoso; no one could give him news. He inquired at the roadside tavern; the tavern keeper was alone, dozing over the counter. He did not know Fructuoso, he said.

Octávio went back again and again until he found the countryman who had given him information there about Antunes’s hired man.

He stood leaning against a doorpost, rolling a cigarette between his fingers. He was speaking into the room to the same woman as before, who was coming toward him, dragging her heavily starched skirts.

“Eh, Nhá-Tuca! Just taking it easy!...” he said in rounded, lilting tones, nodding and winking.

“Oh, what pretty manners! You’re a regular monkey!” she answered, imitating his gesture.

Octávio abruptly interrupted their exchange, called the countryman over, gave him money, and asked about Fructuoso.

Antunes’s hired man was on the run from the police, the other replied, and no one could set eyes on him. He concluded:

“Don’t lose heart. He’ll turn up one of these days...”

But he did not turn up. To distract himself from longing for Eva, Octávio took long rides through neighboring estates and woods. Once he went very close to Mangueiral. He even thought of visiting his cousin, but held back. The last time he had gone she had not shown herself; it had been deliberate, he was convinced of that. Disheartened, he turned back and galloped toward town.

Occasionally he thought of hunting. He spent the whole day in the woods and came home at night tired and bored. He was near Eva and never saw her!

He expected at every moment to hear of her marriage to Azevedo, and, fearing it, avoided his friends’ company. The situation seemed increasingly difficult; without proof, he could not convince his father of his cousin’s innocence.

He wrote to Paulo, explaining the futility of his efforts, and waited for an answer. When none came, he indignantly told Dr. Morton. The old man gave a forced smile and murmured:

“Paulo is courteous. Either he hasn’t received your letter or he must be ill...”

Ill! Octávio would rather his friend’s silence had been caused by discourtesy! He imagined the thousand attentions Eva would lavish on the invalid. He saw her seated at his bedside, giving him medicine and broth, tucking the covers around him in the room’s half-light, always comforting and gentle, watching the clock, bending solicitously over the sick man’s handsome head to guard his sleep!...

Wishing to drive this thought from his mind, he asked whether Morton had heard of Azevedo’s marriage, without finding the courage to say to whom.

“Yes. People say he’s going to marry... I know nothing for certain.”

Octávio left troubled. He often sought out old Morton because he always heard him speak of Eva; yet now even Morton seemed to avoid mentioning her.

Come! Octávio thought, slowing his horse to a walk.

Morton knows everything and is hiding the truth to spare me pain...

Now it was no longer the idea of Eva as Paulo’s attentive nurse that tormented him. He saw her smiling in her little sitting room at Mangueiral, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright, a wedding ring on her finger, working on her trousseau beside Azevedo.

Thus passing from one picture to another, each more tormenting, more brilliant, and more vivid, he took a rough shortcut full of slippery stones and tree trunks. Branches crossed thickly over his head, sometimes so low that he had to lie almost flat on his horse to pass beneath them.

The difficulties of the road succeeded in distracting him a little. Reaching Santa Genoveva, he found Nicota packing clothes. Young Trigueiros had been summoned to give evidence in the criminal proceedings and no longer seemed so disturbed; Azeredo had written at length, assuring him they would emerge victorious from the struggle.

Octávio went to his room and lay down tired. He was about to fall asleep when Saturnino handed him two letters. He opened the first, whose handwriting seemed familiar. It was an invitation to the wedding of Dr. Azevedo and the beautiful Sinhá! Octávio reread the couple’s names in astonishment. He smiled with happiness, enjoying a moment of relief and joy!

At last he opened the second letter, written in a frank, vigorous hand, and read:

“Dear Octávio,

“I returned today from a journey; that is why I have not yet answered your letter...”

Octávio turned the sheet, searching curiously for the signature. Reading Paulo’s name, he got up, moved to the light at the window, and continued reading with close attention.

Sinhá’s wedding was to take place in Campinas, in the New Parish Church.

Antunes’s sister had settled in that city. Besides the formal invitation, she wrote privately to the comendador, begging him not to fail to come; but the old planter, preoccupied with the loss of his slaves, asked his son to represent him and accompany Noemia.

The brother and sister left for Campinas on the morning of the ceremony. Noemia was radiant; she had not attended a ball for a long time, and her youth demanded happiness and festivities.

Antunes’s sister met them at the station and took them to her chalet in Guanabara.

On the way, inside the closed carriage, she told them Sinhá was passionately in love with her fiancé; that he, Azevedo, had courted her for a long time, doing truly extravagant things for her, giving her, in short, the clearest proofs of love!...

Noemia opened her eyes wide, astonished by what she heard.

Octávio tried not to smile, understanding the hidden feeling that prompted those words.

As the praises of Azevedo mounted, he felt a desire to ask whether the man had made no inquiries about the dowry... Still, he refrained from the slightest show of irony, answering the widow’s maternal effusions with flattering remarks about the couple.

Thus they crossed the whole city, descending the hill from the station to the busiest commercial streets and from there to the modern district where they would stay for two days.

After the church ceremony at eight that evening, the bridal couple and their guests would proceed to the Club Semanal, where Sinhá’s mother was giving a ball.

It was the local custom.

And so it was done.

At eight that evening the great church’s main doors stood wide open. Inside, the strong gaslight splashed its brilliance over the white walls, against which the dark carved altars stood out, imposing and graceful, delicate and artistic. Among the kneelers upholstered in dark green shagreen, many curious spectators waited for the procession.

At the appointed hour the bride entered, dazzling in her whiteness and beauty. From the choir loft a shower of flowers fell over her veiled head. Leaning on her wedding sponsor’s arm, she crossed the transept slowly, trailing the long train of her white dress.

She stopped before the high altar, and Azevedo, very pale, took his place beside her.

The priest spoke the first words of the ritual, and the organ above broke into a gentle melody. Light cast fleeting golden reflections on the vicar’s cope and penetrated the garlands of wooden roses on the altars. From the galleries above, a few families watched the spectacle indifferently; the bride’s mother smiled proudly, her broad, dark face lit by the sweetest joy.

Octávio was looking curiously around the church when he caught sight of his cousin, praying on a kneeler. Behind her Paulo stood watching the solemn wedding service.

It was the first time he had seen her like this, in the profound humility of a devout woman; it was also the first time he had seen her in so low-cut a dress, revealing the milky, velvety flesh of her lovely rounded neck and bosom and her shapely arms. The light fell full on the lace and ivory silk of her dress, where not the smallest jewel glittered. Her black hair, pinned up without flower, ribbon, plume, or diadem, gave her in its simplicity an air of majesty and grace. Eva prayed in deep recollection.

The priest blessed the couple and, giving them his hand, helped them rise and congratulated them. The organ’s sound slowly died away, and the procession turned back, treading on the scattered leaves that crackled on the floor.

Gently pulling his sister’s arm, Octávio pointed out Eva, who was now standing and congratulating the bride.

Noemia gave a little cry of pleasure and, hastily pushing past the people in front of her, went to embrace her cousin, exclaiming:

“How lovely! How lovely! I’m so happy! I’ve missed you so much! You know, I have a great deal to tell you... a great deal! Haven’t I, Octávio?” she said, turning to her brother, who timidly offered his cousin his hand. Eva smiled, drew Noemia close, and kissed her tenderly.

“So you miss me?” she asked.

“Terribly! You can’t imagine! Santa Genoveva is like a cemetery! Oh yes, Octávio’s mamã died!”

“Poor Joanna!”

“Poor thing indeed... I was so sorry! Now we have Italian maids... It’s so funny! We don’t understand them and they don’t understand us! We talk by gestures! Needless to say, mine are the most expressive!”

“I believe it. Now another thing: why haven’t you come to see me yet?”

“Not for lack of wanting to, but... What a lovely day I spent there! That’s the way to make having an estate worthwhile! I haven’t ridden since...”

“And have you been studying?”

“No...”

“What do you do, then?”

“If you want the truth... I don’t even know!”

Eager to pour her own feelings into her cousin’s heart, Noemia recounted everything that had happened at the estate since their separation, from the most important matters to the smallest.

Meanwhile the newlyweds received the last embraces, and everyone was leaving the church.

“Why don’t you come in my carriage?” Noemia asked her cousin.

“Because I’m with the Siqueira family... Oh yes! I was introduced to Júlio. He spoke a great deal about you...”

“Ah! Júlio Siqueira Franco?”

“Yes.”

“Did you like him?”

“He’s a fine young man.”

“Is he related to the Siqueiras?”

“He is. And now goodbye, Noemia. Come and see me, if Uncle Medeiros will allow it...”

“When do you return to Mangueiral?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you going to the ball?”

“No. Dona Olympia Siqueira is ill, and I’m going straight back to her.”

“Goodbye, Eva!” Noemia said in a hurt tone, her eyes moist. Eva embraced her and held out her hand to Octávio, who was talking to Paulo a short distance away.

He blushed in embarrassment; she smiled.

An hour later the church was closed and dark, the square outside silent, and far away, at the corner of a deserted street, the first quadrille of the ball burst thunderously from the ballroom of the Club Semanal.

“Very good beer! Will you have another glass?” a fat, bald old gentleman asked Octávio Medeiros in the club’s cramped refreshment room.

“No, thank you.”

“Oh! You don’t seem to have been educated in Germany!”

“Joãozinho!” he went on, addressing a friend—a thin, pale man with a long black beard and very lively eyes, who was kindly handing refreshments to one person after another. “I’ll take some more…”

“Baron! That’s the tenth time you’ve told me so!”

“But it isn’t the fifth time you’ve served me… Go on, pour!” And the baron laughed, his eyes blinking. Having drained his glass, the old gentleman went out, inviting Octávio to smoke with him in the men’s room.

“We can talk while we’re at it… I’m always eager for a chat.”

A waltz was being danced in the ballroom just then, and since the smoking room adjoined it and the musicians’ pavilion served both, neither the baron nor Octávio could hear the other very well.

The instruments drowned their voices. Nevertheless, the baron kept talking, and Octávio watched him most attentively, though his thoughts were wholly detached from what was going on.

From time to time he smiled or nodded when he thought he heard a question, tossing out some random word: “Yes… That’s true… Perhaps… You’re right!” With an effort he would catch a distant thread of the story, but despite himself his mind soon wandered elsewhere.

It was Eva who absorbed him so. Eva, whom he saw again on her knees, her bare elbows resting on the morocco leather of the kneeler, dressed all in light colors, in an ideal simplicity! He had found her proud, singularly cold. He wanted to have seen her troubled, trembling, nervous, and to have discerned in her velvet gaze the lingering caress of love, which, however deeply hidden and silent, shines in the eyes at a moment of joy or anguish, warming, illuminating, blossoming, filling everything with laughter and song!

But no! Eva was always the same, impassive! Toward him she wore the sweet expression of a sympathy without extremes, the manifestation of the simplest, gentlest, most natural friendship. That very feeling made him impatient: it seemed to him born of commiseration, a trace of feminine pity, a faint, subtle reflection of the compassion his sufferings inspired!

Meanwhile the baron was saying:

“Well, that was Campinas twenty years ago, my dear sir! At night you couldn’t see a light in a single window; the streets were dark, full of holes and dangers. When there was a performance, you had to bring chairs from home for your box—as many as there were people—a water jug and a glass, the inevitable cuscuz, which you ate in the corridor during the interval, and a lantern for the journey back!

“And I found everything much more entertaining then than I do today! What it is to be young! Just imagine: to carry so many things, maids and pageboys had to come along, and they stood at the back of the box… The smell those people gave off was not exactly roses… On the stage, in the smoky light of kerosene lamps, dramas such as The Blind Man and the Hunchback, The Marble Women, and so forth, dragged their tearful way along… But I don’t know! Men and women wept alike, whether in the stalls, the boxes, or the galleries. You don’t see so much of that now; our feelings have grown dull, and however moving the play, most of the audience keep dry eyes! That’s what I say, and I stand by it: progress is ruining our hearts! And Carnival, then! Ah, Carnival was when I really enjoyed myself! What can I tell you? I found the whole masquerade beautiful and picturesque. We masked revelers would form a band, each carrying a basket of flowers and feathers—fine things, beautifully made, that cost us rivers of money—and go from window to window, talking to the girls and exchanging the delicate cloth roses we carried for others they gave us, which, to tell the truth, were always inferior!

“And the water games of Entrudo! Oh, that was the best of all! They set tubs in the street, Mr. Octávio! Tubs full of cold water!

“The ladies came to the street corner, seized whoever took their fancy, and… fire! Not fire—water! You were certain of a ducking, whether you wanted one or not. As for the volleys of little wax oranges, don’t even ask! Suffice it to say there were families here whose occupation all year long was making scented-water lemons!

“We raided houses in the morning… during the day, at night, at any hour!… What mischief we got up to! And that was laughter… that was youth! When the Entrudo games ended, the Holy Week games began. Another frolic. We died of heat in the crush inside the church, but never missed the celebration. There was luxury: dresses of good silk, mantillas of excellent lace, and diamonds that sparkled! In those days women wore only black to church, whether it was Holy Week or not. The first family to appear at Mass in colors was censured by everyone; but in the end all those who criticized them began to imitate them, and today, whatever the ceremony, churches are a jumble of colors that strip the place of all solemnity! Believe me! The few cockroaches I meet about town on Sunday mornings nowadays make me long for those days! Very few ladies now conceal themselves beneath a puçá^36-1 or behind lattice shutters! Twenty years ago, if a family went out without its favorite maid, or the girls showed themselves openly at a window to passersby, as they do today—well!

“No indeed! They peeped through the little holes in the lattice, opened no more than the tiniest crack. And any man could marry without fear, because he was certain of finding a modest, hardworking woman in his wife. Isn’t that so?”

Octávio smiled vaguely and gave an uncertain nod. He was in one of his spells of abstraction; the other man interpreted the gesture differently and replied:

“You still hesitate! Is there any comparison between today’s girl, who knows French, German, and English, performs at concerts, and shows off her clothes, and the girls of former times, who lived sewn to their mothers’ skirts and never dared speak to strangers, especially men! Today, yes! They assert themselves, have their club, chatter and laugh loudly, bet on races, and after a quadrille stroll about for half an hour talking to their partners. Will this generation offer the assurances the other one did?…”

As Octávio did not answer, he went on more vehemently:

“It will not! This is a spoiled generation of imitators. Perhaps what you hear makes you think me an enemy of progress. I am nothing of the kind. What I oppose is imitation. Campinas today has no character of its own.

“The railway brought it foreigners, workshops, gas; it spread industry and enriched commerce—I agree.

“But it also robbed us of many of our illusions and therefore of our happiness. We have become demanding and insatiable. The provincial theatrical companies that once drew tears of enthusiasm and emotion from us no longer dare set foot on our stage. What the devil would they come here for, after Rossi, Tessero, Pezana, Gemma, Brazão, Rosas, and others of that sort? And if they came, they would be booed, or the public would shrug contemptuously and stay away. And since the great artists appear only at long intervals, we spend long stretches without entertainment or pleasure for the mind. Today we do what every civilized city does. At balls they no longer dance the merry caranguejo: nothing but waltzes, quadrilles, and polkas. It is a rare plantation that still has the cheerful, picturesque mumbava^36-2 who used to make us laugh so much. Our theater is like all the others: the same order, the same monotony, the same refreshment room, the same sweets and drinks. Everything original, extravagant, and absurd has died or fled in terror at the railway’s whistles! Nowadays even the fear of smallpox isn’t what it was! People no longer fear disfigurement or death—so far have things gone astray! Why, twenty years ago, an epidemic meant flight and abandonment! Little flags fluttered outside the houses: white if the patient inside had only chickenpox; black if it was the kind that left the skin like sandpaper.

“Things were certainly very different! What I confess I regret most of all are our illusions! Oh, in those days we had the sweet conviction that we had money. We thought ourselves rich!”

“Baron!” said a fair-haired, fair-skinned girl of thirteen, approaching and pulling a boy almost her own age by the arm. “Make Joãozinho dance with Vica! She hasn’t a partner, and I haven’t a couple opposite me.”

The baron smiled, persuaded Joãozinho, his grandson, that he ought to dance, then turned back to Octávio and, pointing to the graceful pair as they moved away, continued:

“There you have it! Do you know what, Mr. Medeiros? I’m going home!”

And he walked away.

“Old men are all like that; for them there’s no time better than one that passed many years ago!” said a young man mockingly. He was smoking against a doorjamb and had heard part of the nobleman’s speech.

A few minutes later Octávio entered the ballroom. Noemia was dancing with Júlio Siqueira, smiling and flushed, her blond ringlets crowning her narrow forehead, her blue dress outlining her delicate figure. Azevedo was beside the bride: she serene, he very pale.

Feeling a tap from a fan on his shoulder, Octávio turned. It was Dona Clarinha. Her white neck and bosom rose gracefully from the garnet velvet of her bodice.

“How envious you must be, eh?” she said, indicating Azevedo. “When shall I attend your wedding?”

He answered with some commonplace, and they went off to waltz.

On the first day of May, Comendador Medeiros was startled awake by news from a mutual friend that Antunes had disappeared.

“Well, really!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “Is a man the sort of thing that simply vanishes, with nobody knowing how or why?”

“Could he have been murdered?”

“Hmm… Not very likely. Antunes has no enemies that I know of…”

“Could he have killed himself?”

“Nonsense! It’s true his affairs were in a muddle… but not enough for that…”

“Well, he was fond of his little game, and came home at all hours of the night. Perhaps on the road…”

“I don’t think so either…”

“Yes, it’s true he was very unlucky at cards; he never brought any money home…”

“Could someone have hidden Antunes away?”

“What for?”

“True enough—what for?”

“Oh, you’ve been misinformed! My compadre is enjoying himself at his sister’s house in Campinas this very moment.”

“He isn’t. We’ve already asked her; she’s heard nothing of her brother since her daughter’s wedding.”

“The devil! Then this is serious.”

And the comendador went with his friend to Antunes’s farm. They found the housekeeper in tears. Antunes had left some twenty days earlier without saying where he was going, and the farm had passed out of his possession into that of another man, who said he was a bank administrator…

“Mr. Antunes always had a bad way of managing,^37-1” she said with a sigh. Then, after a short pause, as the visitors were preparing to leave, she added:

“Oh, that’s right! Mr. Antunes gave me a letter to hand to you, Comendador, but I had nobody to take it, so I kept it with me for when we should meet…”

She spent an immense time looking for the letter in her sewing basket, finally finding it between the pillow and its case on her bed.

Medeiros tore open the envelope, but on reading the word CONFIDENTIAL in large letters at the very beginning, he checked his impatience and put it in his pocket, making an excuse to his companion.

They left and walked together as far as the gate of Santa Genoveva. There the other man went on toward town and the comendador entered. A quarter of an hour later, locked inside his room, he opened Antunes’s letter with curiosity and read it in mingled indignation and amazement:

“My good friend Medeiros—I am running away, and I ask God and you to forgive me. Since you will never set eyes on me again, and since things have already taken the course they had to take, let me make my confessions to you. I am going to change my life, and I don’t want to carry remorse with me. My compadre and friend! The stories I have to tell you are sad ones! The first thing I repent of and ask forgiveness for happened many years ago. Do you remember, my friend, the death of the journalist, your niece’s grandfather?…”

At this point Comendador Medeiros’s sight grew troubled and an agonizing sweat dampened his forehead. He paused a moment, then went on reading:

“Well, it was I who killed him, my compadre. I did it!

“You must remember that we stayed at the same hotel in São Paulo. Now, your pageboy Antoninho had once been my slave and respected me greatly: any order I gave him was carried out! So I ordered him to bring me all the letters you wrote. I wanted to see whether you were compromising me with your brother Gabriel about the mortgage on the farm and the exchange of your father’s house for mine… I also wanted to see whether you were trying to persuade him to marry my sister. That was how I read the note in which you threatened to kill the journalist, but what happened afterward did not occur to me at once!

“The trouble was the demon of gambling, which has always been my ruin. The very night I read your note I went to the club and happened to play against Eva’s grandfather. He won, and I lost everything!

“I was desperate, remembered your note, waited at the corner, and killed the man. But when I went to take my money out of his coat pockets, I don’t know what came over me: I began trembling and returned to the hotel like an idiot. I found your pageboy in my room and grew angry with him, but I remained afraid he would tell you of my indiscretion. It was to keep him always under my thumb that I asked you for the overseer’s place on your farm. There I stayed; when I had to leave, your pageboy died! God forgive me! Many years passed after that, and I was always well received by all your family except Gabriel, who seemed suspicious of me! And I myself did not have the courage to face him! I thought I would never commit another crime, but unfortunately it was not so! A few months ago I fell again. Here is what happened: I was very eager for my niece Sinhá to marry your son Octávio, not only because I liked him very much, but because, as her guardian, I had disposed of her dowry in dealings with friends. Since you were my largest creditor, you would plainly be the most indulgent, and the debt to you would then be settled with your children. That is to say, an important part of Sinhá’s dowry was already in the family, and I would suffer nothing by it! I supposed Octávio would take a liking to the girl, but I was wary of Eva, who, beautiful and educated as she was, would end by possessing Octávio’s heart unless she were pushed aside. I watched how matters went, and when I saw my fears coming true, I caused the disturbance at Santa Genoveva with my hired men, then threw the blame onto Gabriel’s orphan! The thing was well done. And I saw with joy and pride that you were turning out of the house the woman I feared would live at Octávio’s side! Your son’s wound was something I had not foreseen, and it saddened me. Fortunately he is well again, so I take no worries with me on that account.

“What I regret is that I did not set the intrigue going in time: it was too late and did no good! Azevedo’s marriage to my niece put me in difficulties; there were demands for money and so on. I broke with my sister; my farm, mortgaged years ago, was taken from me yesterday! I find myself without resources, and rather than live in humiliation where I once kept up such appearances, I am fleeing to another country, somewhere unknown to my creditors. I write this letter as though making my confession! And the only comfort I can have at the end of my life is to know that you will forgive me. Tear up this letter; forget the wretch who wrote it!… Forgive me—once again, forgive me! Your friend, Antunes.”

Livid and trembling, the comendador read that accursed paper again from beginning to end—once, twice, four times. It seemed to burn his hands! The man in whom he had placed so much confidence, to whom he always turned in times of sorrow or doubt, was a storehouse of poison, a perverted spirit, a false heart! He had sought him out for consolation, and this man alone, solely and exclusively, had been the cause of his unhappiness! Tears streamed down cheeks blotched with indignation and anger. He felt rage and pain together: an illusion cherished for many years cannot fall without the blow causing us the deepest hurt! It is as though a leafy, verdant, fragrant tree, whose shade we had grown accustomed to, were suddenly uprooted, leaving everything barren, dry, and melancholy.

That same afternoon, showing his son Antunes’s letter, the comendador admitted regretting what he had done to his niece. Radiant with joy, Octávio suggested that they all go to Mangueiral.

“What for? I am old, and I ought not to lower myself to ask a child’s forgiveness! Let her know I no longer hate her, and that is enough.”

Octávio tried to insist; his father turned his back on him.

The cold May breeze wrinkled the surface of Mangueiral’s great lake, stripping the countless camellias in the park beside the house of their petals.

The beautiful winter sun, golden and warm, tinted the shining sand of the paths and the grass in the beds with prismatic colors. Butterflies flew, and the fragrance of mignonette sweetly permeated everything.

Beside the window of the little music room, in a chair with a tall, slender back, Eva was occupied in knitting small jackets for the children of the settlement. Balls of red, black, and white yarn lay in a tangle over the gray wool of her small-checked dress, while her pale, nimble hands rapidly worked the long ivory needles. She was alone in the room when Paulo entered. She did not raise her head; with her chin against the high collar of her dress, edged with a narrow strip of white, she continued intent on her charitable work. It was he who, leaning against the windowsill, said in a slightly trembling voice:

“I’ve just read a letter from your cousin. He is radiant! His father finally admits he was unjust to you and is ready to embrace you! For the great happiness of that reconciliation, it is only right to make some sacrifice when circumstances such as these require it.

“Now, my good Eva will surely not refuse to yield to that necessity, since she is the younger and has a spirit above commonplace pettiness…”

“I don’t quite understand you. Has Uncle Medeiros expressed a wish to see me?”

“Yes… He regrets what he did to you, and naturally, for his conscience to be at rest, the man wants to know he is forgiven…”

“Then what sacrifice am I being asked to make?”

“To go there…”

“To Santa Genoveva?”

“Yes. And what is so extraordinary about that?”

“Everything! I shall never enter that house again!”

“That is a whim that may jeopardize your happiness! Treat your heart better! It is time to think of the future…”

“You’re speaking in riddles today!”

“Do you say that sincerely?”

“Certainly. You know very well I’ve never had a talent for solving riddles…”

“Leave irony aside and listen to me. Octávio Medeiros loves you. I’m telling you nothing new; I heard it from your own lips the night you left your uncle’s house. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes…”

“Well, on that occasion he honorably asked for your hand, and you, solely to satisfy your pride, answered no!

“Today, however, matters are different. The obstacle to that marriage has fallen away; there is no longer any reason to conceal feelings or take a stand on misguided pride. The truth appears in all its purity. It would therefore be no discredit to you to show poor Octávio, who has given you so many proofs of love, how many your own heart holds in store for him! Come, my good Eva! Don’t hesitate to confess it. The moments when one can be happy are so rare in life!”

These last words were spoken with poorly concealed sadness and bitterness. A pause followed, during which nothing could be heard but the dry friction of the two long ivory needles.

“Well?” Paulo persisted, bending forward a little. “Octávio asks me for advice and hope; both must come from you!”

“Do you think Octávio will make me happy?” Eva asked, her voice almost inaudible, as though some grief were choking her.

“I do. He is a very worthy young man, intelligent, kind, and above all very much in love… It won’t be easy to find another with the same qualities! Our young men nowadays aim at only one thing: the dowry! The Azevedos make up, so to speak, the entire pack of provincial suitors! A calamity! Just look at the examples: Bettencourt’s daughters, educated and pretty, are poor… so they remain unmarried!…

“Lemos’s daughters too, and others! With half a dozen contos they would all be married, for you know very well that young men even come here from elsewhere on account of the good matches…”

“You mean I should not hesitate to give Octávio my hand?”

Paulo did not answer. He ran his fingers through his hair and, turning toward the open air, drew a deep breath as though to restore himself. Then, resuming his usual placid tone, he said:

“Yes, you should not hesitate, since you love him.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your emotion, Eva. Ah, I have studied you for a long time. The night I saw you arrive from Santa Genoveva, pale, distraught, ill, I was able to observe you better than ever and become certain of your affection for him. My God! Nothing could be more natural or have caused me less surprise! Let me even say that I expected precisely that…”

Eva had stopped working. The needles and yarn fell from her hands. Her head bowed and her eyes lowered, she listened to Paulo in a mysterious, profound inward silence. He continued:

“Octávio was more open with me. Confirming what you had already told me about his proposal, he declared simply and honestly that he adored you, begging for support which, I don’t know why, he thought I could give him! As you well know, I have always avoided interfering in such matters; but when it concerns people I value so highly and in whom I take so deep an interest, that changes things.

“For a long time I’ve wanted to hasten this hour, to oblige you to be happy!”

Eva smiled ironically. Paulo went on:

“Your pride has overcome much, but it has not overcome everything. You had the strength to leave your uncle’s house proudly and alone; very well, now have the courage to face the difficulty of the moment and go offer your forehead for his kiss of reconciliation. However dulled that man’s feelings may be, I swear he will weep and call you his daughter! Come! One sacrifice, Eva! I beg you in Octávio’s name and in the name of your own heart!”

“My heart?…” she stammered in a low voice.

“Yes, your heart, which you insist on treating so badly.”

“My God!…” Eva was about to go on, but checked herself and bowed her head still lower, so that the two tears rolling heavily down her pale cheeks might not be seen.

Leaning against the windowsill, Paulo looked out into the garden, where camellia petals fell like dead butterflies, carpeting the ground. Without taking his eyes from them, he asked:

“What is your answer?”

“What can I say? That I thought you more my friend.”

This time Eva raised her eyes, and Paulo, touched and startled, saw the tears, the painfully wounded expression, the deep, indescribable grief floating in those dark, velvet pupils, until then impenetrable and now transparent as crystal.

He shuddered, feeling the dizziness of someone leaning over an abyss. It was Eva who began, in an unsteady voice:

“I grew accustomed to obeying you, to following all your advice with my eyes shut. Do you want me to marry Octávio? Then let your will be done. I shall be his wife, since society demands that I have a husband and censures me for living as I please with a brother… Ah! I already know what you are going to say: that I am not, in fact, your sister. I am not your sister! As though strangers needed to remind me of that! Do you remember, Paulo, the day you arrived? I was over there, beneath that mango tree! My mother came to me, leading you by the hand, and said, ‘Eva! Here is a brother for you! Embrace him and love him!’ We embraced; and ever since…”

Eva stopped, but her beautiful eyes spoke. Spoke? No—they cried aloud everything in her heart. Paulo bent toward her, absorbed in that gaze, forgetful of all else, silent, receiving into his soul that beneficent, unexpected, consoling gust! And so they remained, their lips mute, but exchanging in their eyes a world of promises and of passion that revealed itself as immense, deep-rooted, sincere, ripened by thought and shared life—a passion that had taken hold of them both over time, since childhood, perhaps without their knowing it.

Transported with joy, Paulo took Eva’s head between his hands and kissed her eyelids again and again.

And thus, without uttering a word, they passionately declared their love.

When Princess Isabel’s patrician hand decreed the emancipation of the slaves in Rio, scenes of the most grotesque and irresistible comedy were taking place in the province.

Octávio, to whom everything now seemed cheerful and beautiful, wrapped in the sweet hope of marrying his cousin, took long rides and had occasion to see how thoroughly the old planters’ selfishness consumed and spoiled everything. He spent two days in peace of mind, although he had no definite assurance of Eva’s forgiveness and consent. He was waiting, but with his father’s hostility overcome, everything else seemed easy and pleasant. And while he awaited Paulo’s reply and his cousin’s consent, he went about in good spirits and serenity, observing with curiosity the attitudes of his family’s old friends.

When the news of the slaves’ deliverance rang out like a resounding bugle call, Comendador Medeiros was the first to offer his son something singular to observe.

He who had until then supported the government, applauding, from conviction and as a matter of principle, every act of the Conservative ministry—the party in whose ranks he had fought since his youth; he who had always remained faithful to his idea, clinging to it like an oyster to a rock, and who was one of the influential and powerful men at elections; he, old Medeiros, long known in local politics as one of the throne’s fiercest and most uncompromising defenders—on the afternoon of that glorious thirteenth of May, he fumed with indignation, scattering all his old opinions to the four winds and proclaiming the Republic as the country’s only salvation.

Discontented, injured in his private interests, he was sincere. He was not changing his politics merely out of spite: he changed because his disappointment drove him to it.

Octávio witnessed this transformation in amazement. The following day he observed a still more extraordinary scene at the home of Gusmão, a planter reputed to be harsh and implacable.

Gusmão’s plantation lay halfway to Mangueiral, and Octávio would approach his cousin’s house, always finding one pretext or another, to see whether he might meet her on the road or summon the courage to knock at her door. But neither thing ever happened. Eva remained shut up in her delightful home, and Octávio was plainly wasting his time. That day he had taken the road to Gusmão’s plantation as he might have taken any other in that direction. He found the rancorous planter addressing the slaves, to whom he said he was granting freedom! And he strutted over his generous deed, trying to persuade the servants that so great a blessing came from him!

Octávio could not help laughing. From there, after the inevitable coffee and a little conversation, he set off again along the road to Mangueiral, where the broom made great yellow patches. He was thoughtful: he had written to Paulo telling him everything, speaking of his love and the hopes he cherished. It was already time for an answer… And why should he not go himself to learn what it was? He was near; in ten minutes he could gain certainty of a happy future. Why should he hesitate? Yet at every step a doubt arose in his mind, an instinctive, vague, childish fear of being badly received and suffering disappointment. He immediately swept those suppositions from his mind. He thought he had divined in Eva a hidden feeling of suppressed passion, all the more intense for being suppressed. And he saw her again in the beautiful hours they had shared, from the day of his arrival, when he had seen her ask mercy for the black slave, to the day of her departure, when he had seen her leave with her head high and her gaze proud and flashing. Thinking of her, he prolonged his ride; he had let the animal go peacefully where it pleased, until he found himself, late now, by the light of the first stars, in the yard of Santa Genoveva. In the great shadowy dining room, the hammocks creaked as always, and yawns could be heard. Noemia no longer played with the dogs; she had lost that craze. Now she was taken with training carrier pigeons, but was already showing discouragement at the poor little creatures’ stupidity and looking for another diversion.

The memory of Paulo had faded. With her temperament and her fifteen years, feelings came and went without her ever really being much disturbed.

“Has any letter come for me?” Octávio asked Saturnino as soon as he arrived.

“No, sir… Nothing has come that I know of!” the mulatto answered with his affected gestures.

“It is certainly better to wait at home for the answer…” Octávio thought.

And he stayed in all the following day. The hours passed slowly, and he lost himself in conjectures. What could have happened? What would Eva do? From time to time he went to the window and watched the road winding in the distance through the green pasture, deserted and sun-beaten. He turned back into the room, opened a book, tried to write, to study, to distract himself; but the same idea rose obstinately before him, and he got up again to gaze, now without hope, at the long road beyond.

At last, at five in the afternoon, Saturnino entered his room with a letter from Mangueiral.

Octávio opened it nervously. Before him the attendant—who, though freed by the great law, had not wished to leave the house to which so much affection bound him—watched with curiosity and sadness, his tall, slender figure outlined against the brightness of the open window. Octávio was so moved that he did not notice the mulatto’s attitude. He read on, growing paler as he advanced.

Paulo wrote with constraint, telling his story with a forced serenity.

He almost asked Octávio’s forgiveness for being preferred by Eva, revealing a delicacy of feeling that verged on the morbid. There was something painful and chastened in the way he said he was happy, as though his good fortune caused him remorse! From time to time, however, some bright and joyful expression he had been unable to contain sprang out; but he quickly, mercifully smothered every sign of delight beneath melancholy, cold language. The letter was long, tortured, anguished—a letter written with the pain, the extraordinary pain, of saying to an unhappy man: “I am happy! What wounds and crushes you is what delights and rejoices me!” However great the disguise, Paulo could not hide his happiness from Octávio. That delicate, poignant style recalled a rose garden in bloom, lush and fresh, smothered beneath dry, thorny hedges so that no one might see it. The flowers were indeed concealed, but their intoxicating fragrance broke through the merciful covering and spread through the air, betraying their hidden existence.

When he finished reading, Octávio raised his eyes. Saturnino remained motionless as a statue. Octávio vented his anger on him, ordering him out. The mulatto obeyed without protest. Octávio was alone.

He crumpled the letter and threw it on the floor.

“Hypocrite!… Hypocrite!” he repeated furiously, stamping on the paper in rage. He locked the door, sat down beside the table, rested his elbows on it, and hid his face in his hands.

His cousin passed through his mind, multiplying herself in a strange procession. It was always Eva, now radiant, now proud, now withdrawn, now expansive. He saw her from behind at the henhouse door, throwing corn to the birds, simple in her everyday percale dress, as on the day of his arrival; he saw her in low-cut white satin beneath the harsh gaslight, kneeling at the prayer desk in the parish church of Campinas; he saw her twining the jasmine stems with the care of a gentle, unassuming housewife; he saw her galloping beside Paulo, her riding habit and veil streaming; he saw her bent over his bed, tending the wound in his shoulder sweetly, maternally; he saw her rejecting his father’s insult. He saw her always, now happy, now sad, now disdainful, now tender, one image succeeding another, repeating itself, mocking, weeping, but always beautiful and always loved!

The vision continued: now she spoke to him beside the mill and compassionately led him to see the poor paralyzed mamã; and deep in his heart the old woman’s words echoed sadly: “How I’d like you to marry her!” Then he guided her through the woods, gave her flowers, listened to her enchanted, sat beside her beneath the wild fig tree, talking to the sound of the water that ran sobbing at their feet…

It had all passed. The sweet Eva of former days would have to dissolve from his thoughts as though she were a vision from a mere dream!

Night came, dark and calm. Octávio went down to the yard, avoiding the company of his family. But there too, in the solitude and darkness, another memory of Eva pursued him. Beneath the window of the German woman’s room, he remembered the soft light of the frosted-glass lamp beside which his cousin had recited a poem by Goethe in a grave, serious voice. Then he had doubted; jealousy of another man—of Azevedo—had begun to stir. How far away it all was! And how he longed for that uncertain, undecided state of mind!

The cold May wind hissed in the bamboo beside the pond and stirred the two casuarinas in the pasture with a sad sound like the sea.

Octávio paced back and forth, wrapped in the blackness of the night and of his grief.

What was he to do? How could he fight this disappointment? He cared little about that! He felt something like a bitter voluptuousness in suffering for her in this way.

“At least I have had the good fortune to love,” he concluded sadly.

Eva’s wedding was celebrated on the estate itself.

There were few guests: Dr. Morton, a married daughter of Dona Miquelina, and the Medeiros family. The comendador did not fail to come. It was the second time he had entered that house, and, recalling with emotion the first, when he had come to bid a final farewell to his brother, the unfortunate Gabriel, he felt his heart tighten with a feeling that mingled remorse and longing.

He embraced his niece tenderly, as though putting into that embrace all the affection he had always so unjustly withheld from her. He made no reference to the past and avoided Paulo’s gaze as a defendant avoids a judge’s scrutiny.

Octávio appeared serene. He greeted the bride and groom like a man resigned to defeat, retaining his elegant bearing and easy manner of conversation. He was pale but outwardly cheerful, a cheerfulness born of nervous excitement. Wishing to escape the sight of the couple, he took his father outside, making him observe the beauties of Mangueiral as the result of intelligent management.

Everything there was cheerful and promising. Everything had an air of modernity and cleanliness: the houses washed white, an abundance of fruit in the orchard and flowers in the garden, comfort in the dwelling, and beautifully tended coffee plantations.

“There is no profession more beautiful than the planter’s,” Octávio told his father, “when he succeeds in making the corner of the world where he lives a paradise like this! To dig the earth brutally, taking nothing from it but material profit, is a vile selfishness. I regret having fled the surroundings into which I was born. With Paulo’s education, perhaps I too might have made something like this of Santa Genoveva…”

The comendador looked at his son in surprise and, with a sigh that still betrayed his longing for his former slaves, murmured:

“What choice have I now but to transform all that…”

Meanwhile Noemia fluttered around Eva, giving her the consolation of showing that she had forgotten her first love.

The comendador and his daughters returned to Santa Genoveva that afternoon, crossing the coffee fields and pastures, where weeds were beginning to appear. In the broad yard dogs barked and raced wildly, and beyond the gate leading to the pond, pigs rooted among the corncobs and husks scattered thickly over the ground. Inside, in the dining room, the mother rocked in her hammock, sifting rice, while an Italian maid laid the table for dinner.

A few days later Octávio knocked at Dr. Morton’s window. The old man was reading aloud from a scientific book, as was his habit.

“What’s this? You’re going on a journey!” he exclaimed, seeing the young man in a dust coat with a bag slung across his shoulder.

“That’s right! I’m going to live in the land of camellias and cold.”

“You’re off to São Paulo?”

“Yes, sir. And I’ve come to say goodbye and thank you…”

“Thank me for what? Ah, I knew nothing about it, and as soon as I suspected… So you’re going to São Paulo?” he went on, changing his tone. “But for good? I seem to have heard you say you were going to live there!”

“I’m going to enroll in the Faculty of Law…”

“What an idea! You’re already an engineer… Well, there’s glory in it!”

“No, it’s a mania. As a young provincial, I inevitably follow the career of my countrymen… You know, I would be incomplete without a law degree! But it’s late—goodbye, doctor.”

“Goodbye, Octávio. A good journey to you.”

THE END