João Romão stopped at the entrance and shouted to one of the smiths, “Bruno! Don’t forget the handle for that lantern beside the gate!”
The two men stopped working for a minute.
“I had a look at it,” Bruno replied. “It’s not worth fixing; it’s completely rusted. Have a new one made!”
“Well then hurry up! That lantern’s about to fall!”
And João and his guest continued on their way, while behind them the anvil began to resound again.
Soon they caught sight of a miserable stable strewn with straw and manure, with space for a half-dozen draft animals. It was empty, but the stench made it clear that the place had been full the night before. Then came another shed full of lumber, which also served as a carpenter’s workplace. Large tree trunks lay by the door—some of them already sawed—along with piles of planks and masts from ships.
They were barely twenty yards from the quarry, and the ground was covered with a fine mineral dust that clung to their clothes and skin like lime.
Here, there, and everywhere they spied workers, some out in the sun and others sheltered by canvas or thatched palm roofs. In one spot men sang as they broke stone; in another, they attacked it with picks; in still another, they fashioned cobbles and hexagonal paving stones with chisels and mallets. And all that cacophonous clamor of tools, along with the hammering from the forge, the chorus of drills above them preparing the stone to be blasted, the dull buzzing of the slum in the distance, like a village called to arms—it all created a sensation of fierce toil, of bitter, deadly struggle. Those men dripping sweat, drunk with the heat, crazed with sunstroke, pounding, stabbing, and tormenting the stone seemed a band of puny devils rising up against an impassive giant who scornfully looked down at them, indifferent to the blows they rained upon his back, suffering them to tear out his granite entrails. The mighty Portuguese stonecutter reached the foot of that haughty stone monster. Standing face to face with it, he took its measure silently and defiantly.
Viewed from this vantage point, the quarry showed its most imposing aspect. Disordered, its wounded flank exposed to the sun, it rose up proudly, smoothly, steeply toward the sky, burning hot and covered with ropes that crisscrossed its cyclopean nakedness like spiderwebs. In certain spots above the precipice, they had pricked it with pins that supported miserable planks that looked like toothpicks from below but on top of which brazen pygmies chipped away at the giant.
The visitor shook his head sadly, showing his disapproval of what he saw.
“Look!” he said, pointing to a certain spot on the rock. “Your men have no idea what they’re doing! They should be over on the other side. This whole stretch is top-quality granite! And look what you’re ending up with: a few chips that aren’t worth a damn! It hurts me to see such good stone go to waste! All you’ll be able to get out of this is paving stones. It’s a sin, believe me. Stone like this is too good for paving streets!”
Pursing his lips, João Romão listened in silence, appalled at the thought that he was losing money.
“Your workers aren’t worth a damn!” the other man exclaimed. “They should be drilling where that guy’s standing, so the explosion would break off that whole chunk along the seam. But who do you have that knows how to do it? No one! You need an expert. The way it is now, unless the powder’s measured just right not only won’t the rock split like you want it to but that guy’ll end up as dead as the other one. You have to know what you’re doing to get the most out of this quarry. The stone’s good, but these men don’t treat it right. It’s so sheer that whoever blasts it can only get away by shinnying up a rope, and if he’s not quick he’s a goner! Take my word for it!”
And after pausing a moment, he added, picking up a cobble in his hand, itself as large as a big rock, “What did I say? Look at this! Granite chips! These jackasses should be ashamed to let you see such junk!”
Walking along the right side of the quarry and then following it as it curved around, they could see how huge it was. They were covered with sweat by the time they reached the other side.
“What a gold mine—” the huge visitor exclaimed, stopping in front of another sheer cliff.
“I haven’t bought this part yet,” João Romão said.
And they kept walking.
There were even more open sheds in this area; the workers toiled beneath them, indifferent to the two onlookers. One could see open fires with pots held in place by four stones, and little boys bringing their fathers’ lunches. There was not a woman in sight. From time to time, beneath a piece of canvas, they would run across a group of men squatting as they faced each other, holding sardines in their left hands and hunks of bread in their right ones, with a jug of water beside them.
“What a mess . . .” the stonecutter muttered.
The entire quarry seemed to seethe with hard work. But at the very back, beneath the bamboo trees that marked its boundary, some workers were asleep in the shade, their mouths wide open, their beards jutting out, their necks bulging with jugular veins as thick as cables on a ship, breathing deeply and steadily like tired animals after a big feed.
“Look at them loafing,” the stonecutter grumbled. ‘You need someone tough enough to make sure they stay on the job.”
“This part doesn’t belong to me,” Romão observed.
“But they must be doing the same thing on your side.”
“They take advantage because they know I have to mind the store.”
“I can promise you they wouldn’t take it easy with me around. I think workers should be well paid, with full bellies and plenty of wine, but if they don’t do their jobs, fire them! There are plenty of men out there looking for work! Hire me and you’ll see what I can do!”
“The trouble is those damned seventy mil-réis,” João Romão sighed.
“Ah, not a penny less! But with me you’ll see how much money you’ll save. You don’t need a lot of these workers. Why do you have so many trimmers making cobblestones? That job could be done by kids or by your men in their spare time. Instead of all those loafers who must make around thirty mil-réis—”
“That’s exactly how much I pay them.”
“You’d be better off hiring two skilled workers for fifty who’d get twice as much done and who could do other jobs too. These morons act like it’s their first day on the job. Look, that’s the third time that guy’s dropped his chisel!”
The two men both looked thoughtful as they silently walked back to São Romão.
“And if I hired you,” the tavern-keeper said after a while, “would you come and live here?”
“Of course! Why should I stay in Cidade Nova if I’m going to work here?”
“And you’ll eat at my restaurant . . .”
“No; my wife’ll do the cooking, but she’ll buy groceries at your store.”
“Then it’s a deal,” João Romão declared, convinced that this was no time to pinch pennies. And he thought to himself; “Those seventy mil-réis will end up back in the till; it’ll all stay in the family.”
“So that’s that?”
“That’s that!”
“Can I move in tomorrow?”
“Today, if you like. I’ve got an empty house right now: number thirty-five. I’ll show it to you.”
And quickening their pace, they set out across the lot between the quarry and São Romão.
“Ah, I almost forgot! What’s your name?”
“Jarônimo.”
“Does your wife do laundry?”
“That’s how she makes her living.”
“Well then, we’ll have to find her a tub.”
And João pushed open the gate, from which—as from a boiling cauldron suddenly uncovered—a babble of voices issued, along with the smell of sweat and wet laundry.
V
The next day, at seven in the morning, when the courtyard had already begun to seethe with toiling washerwomen, Jerônimo and his wife appeared, ready to move into the house they had rented the n
ight before.
The wife’s name was Piedade de Jesus. She looked about thirty years old—tall, with firm and abundant flesh, thick, dark chestnut hair, teeth that, though discolored, were strong and well formed, and a round face. Everything about her breathed guileless goodwill, radiating from her eyes and mouth in a winning expression of simple and instinctive honesty.
They were sitting beside the driver of a wagon that held all their earthly belongings. She was wearing a red serge skirt, a white cotton blouse, and a red kerchief around her head; her husband wore the same clothes as the day before.
Staggering beneath the objects they feared to entrust to the movers, they carefully climbed down from the wagon. Jerônimo held two formidable, primitive lamp-chimneys so big he could have easily stuck his legs through them. Piedade struggled with an old wall clock and a bunch of plaster saints and palm leaves. Thus encumbered, they made their way across the courtyard amid the comments and curious stares of the other tenants, who always looked a little suspiciously upon newcomers.
“Who is that guy?” Machona asked Augusta Carne-Mole, who was scrubbing clothes beside her.
“João Romão must have hired him to work at the quarry,” she replied. “They spent a hell of a long time there yesterday.”
“And that woman with him—is she his wife?”
“I guess so.”
“She looks like she just got off the boat.”
“One thing’s for sure: They’ve got some high-class furniture,” Leocádia interjected. “A fancy bed and a dressing table with a great big mirror.”
“Nha Leocádia, did you see that chest of drawers?” Florinda asked, shouting because Bruxa and old Marciana stood between them.
“I saw it. Didn’t it look fine?”
“And how about those saints? Aren’t they pretty?”
“I saw them too. They’re beautiful. Whoever they are, you can tell they’ve got money—you can’t deny that!”
“Only time will tell if they’re good or bad,” Dona Isabel ventured.
“All that glitters isn’t gold,” Albino added with a sigh.
“Wasn’t number thirty-five where that yellow man who made cigars used to live?” Augusta inquired.
“He used to,” Leocádia, the blacksmith’s wife replied, “but I think he left owing a lot of back rent and yesterday João Romão cleared out his stuff and sold it.”
“That’s what happened,” Machona remarked. “Yesterday, at around two in the afternoon I saw João Romão with the cigar-maker’s junk. Maybe he kicked the bucket like that other guy who sold jewelry.”
“No. I think this one’s still alive.”
“I can tell you one thing: That thirty-five’s unlucky. I wouldn’t take it as a gift. That’s where Maricas do Farjão died.”
Three hours later, Jerônimo and Piedade had unpacked and were about to sit down to lunch, which the woman had prepared as well and as quickly as she could. He had a great many things to attend to that afternoon, but if he could finish them all before nightfall he’d be able to start work the next morning.
He was as good and reliable a worker as he was a man.
Jerônimo, along with his wife and baby daughter, had set sail from Portugal to try his luck as a tenant farmer in Brazil. In this capacity, he had drudged for two years with scarcely a moment’s rest and had left at last empty-handed and with a great hatred of everything connected with farming. To continue working in the back country, he’d have had to become like the black slaves, sharing their degrading existence, as limited as that of beasts of burden, without hopes for the future, always working for someone else.
That wasn’t what he wanted. He decided to give up that stupefying existence and set out for the capital where, his countrymen told him, anyone willing to work could find a job. And in fact, as soon as he arrived, driven by poverty and need, he set to work breaking stone at a quarry for a miserable wage. His life remained harsh and precarious. His wife washed and ironed, but she had few customers and they paid little. Between the two of them, they barely made enough to avoid starvation and to pay the rent on their shack.
Jerônimo, however, was determined and quick-witted. Within a few months he had learned his new trade and had been promoted from breaking rocks to fashioning hexagonal paving stones. After learning to use a plumb and square, he began making bricks; and finally, through his perseverance, he became as skilled as the best workers at the quarry and earned the same wages they did. Within two years, he had distinguished himself so much that the boss made him a kind of foreman and raised his pay to seventy mil-réis.
But he owed his success not only to his zeal and skill. Two other factors contributed: his bull-like strength, feared and respected by his fellow workers; and the sober, austere purity of his character and habits. His honesty was proof against all temptations, while his way of life was primitive and simple. He went from his house to his job and from his job to his house, where no one had ever seen him quarrel with his wife. Their daughter always looked clean and well-fed, and both parents were the first to arrive at their jobs in the morning. On Sundays, they sometimes attended mass or went for a stroll in the afternoon. On such occasions, he donned a starched shirt, proper shoes, and a jacket, while she wore her best clothes and some gold jewelry she had brought from Portugal and that had never been pawned—not even in the hard times right after their arrival in Brazil.
Piedade was worthy of her husband. She was hard-working, good-natured, honest, and strong. She got along well with everything and everybody, laboring from sunup to sundown and doing such a good job that almost all her customers—despite the move to Botafogo—continued to bring her their laundry.
When they were still living in Cidade Nova and before Jerônimo had begun to earn more money, he had joined a religious society and tried to save a bit each month. He enrolled his daughter in a school, saying “I want her to know more than I do, because my parents never taught me anything.” Their house had been the cleanest, most respected, and most comfortable in the neighborhood. But after his boss’s death, the heirs had stupidly reorganized the quarry from top to bottom, and Jerônimo, displeased with these changes, had decided to seek another job.
That was when he heard about João Romão who, after the accident involving his best worker, was looking for someone exactly like Jerônimo.
Jerônimo took charge of the entire workforce, with highly beneficial results, and the quarry seemed better run with every passing day. His example made the others more zealous. He allowed no loafing, nor would he permit idlers to occupy the places of men ready to work for a living. He fired some workers, hired others, and raised the wages of those who remained, while assigning them additional jobs and making everything more efficient. At the end of two months, João Romão, rubbing his hands together with glee, thought delightedly of how much money Jerônimo had saved him. He was even ready to raise his salary in order to keep him. “It’d be worth it! That man’s a gold mine! What a favor Machucas did by sending him!” And he began to treat his foreman with a respectful deference he accorded to no one else.
The prestige and consideration Jerônimo had enjoyed at his previous residence were gradually reproduced among his new neighbors. After a while, he was consulted and heeded whenever difficulties arose. People doffed their hats to him as to a superior, and even Alexandre, making an exception in his case, saluted him, touching his policeman’s cap if he met Jerônimo in the courtyard as he went out or returned from work. The two clerks at the store, Domingos and Manuel, were among his greatest admirers. “He should be the boss,” they said. “He’s honest, and no one can push him around. Nobody argues with that guy.” Whenever Piedade shopped at the store, her purchases were carefully selected and fairly weighed and measured. Many washerwomen resented her, but she was so kind and good-natured that no one could speak ill of her and their malicious gossip withered in the bud.
Jerônimo rose at four every morning, washed beneath a faucet in the courtyard while everyone else was still as
leep, broke his fast with a big bowl of rich, greasy soup and a loaf of bread, and in his striped shirt, bareheaded, wearing a pair of gigantic old, rawhide shoes on his big, sockless feet, he headed for the quarry.
The sound of his pickaxe called his fellow workers to order. That tool, wielded by his Herculean hands, rang out louder than all the bugles in a regiment. At its reverberations, ashen faces appeared out of the morning mist, hastening toward the mountain to drill for their daily bread. And when the sun cast its first rays upon the cliff, it found that wretched troop of obscure battlers already chipping away at the stony giant.
Jerônimo did not return home until late afternoon, always starving and exhausted. For supper, his wife cooked Portuguese dishes. And in their tiny sitting room, peaceful and humble, the two of them enjoyed, side by side, the quiet, simple-hearted, voluptuous pleasure of rest after a day’s drudgery in the sun. By the light from the kerosene lamp, they talked about their life and Mariana, their daughter, who was at a boarding school and only visited them on Sundays and holidays.
The Slum (Library of Latin America) Page 6