The Slum (Library of Latin America)

by Aluisio Azevedo

  “I don’t know, honey!” the mulatta commented afterward to one of her friends in the courtyard. “By hook or by crook, she always has the time of her life! She’s got everything: a nice house, that carriage she goes out in every afternoon, theater every night, dances whenever she feels like it, and on Sundays she goes out sailing or to the races or to fancy parties out of town, and she’s got so much money she doesn’t know what to do with it! Plus she’s not at the mercy—like Leocádia and all these others—of some moron’s kicks and slaps. She’s her own mistress, free as love itself! She doesn’t have to let anyone touch her unless she’s in the mood!”

  “Where’s Pombinha?” the visitor asked. “I still haven’t seen her.”

  “Oh!” Augusta said. “She’s not around. Her mother took her to dance class.”

  And since Léonie’s face reflected her incomprehension, Augusta explained that every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Dona Isabel’s daughter, for two mil-réis a night, was a partner at a school where clerks learned to dance.

  “That’s where she met Costa—” she added.

  “Costa?”

  “Her fiancé. Didn’t you know Pombinha was engaged?”

  “Ah yes, of course!”

  Then the cocotte asked, lowering her voice, “Did she get it yet?”

  “No, but not because the two of them haven’t tried. Just now the old woman made another vow to Our Lady of the Annunciation—but nothing seems to work!”

  A few minutes later, Augusta offered Léonie a cup of coffee, which she refused, saying she couldn’t drink it. “I’m taking some medicine. . . .” She didn’t specify what the medicine was or why she needed it.

  “I’d rather have a beer,” she declared.

  And without giving anyone a chance to object, she drew a ten mil-réis bill from her purse and sent Agostinho to buy three big bottles of Carlsberg.

  At the sight of those foaming mugs, a tender silence fell upon the crowd. The cocotte handed them to those present, keeping one for herself. There wasn’t enough to go around. She wanted to send the boy back for more, but her friends refused to allow it, saying two or three people could drink from the same mug.

  “Why should you spend so much? You’re too generous!”

  Léonie deliberately forgot to pocket the change, which she left on the bureau, amid a clutter of old keepsakes.

  “So Augusta, when will I see you at my house again?” Léonie asked.

  “Next week, for sure. I’ll bring you all the clothes. But if you need anything sooner I’ll wash it before then.”

  “Well, if you could send over some sheets and towels . . . ah, and nightgowns too! I don’t have many left.”

  “The day after tomorrow you’ll have them.”

  It was getting late. A clock struck ten. Léonie, who was feeling impatient, asked Agostinho to go and see if the young man who was supposed to call for her was waiting outside the gate.

  “The same one who came with you last time?”

  “No, this one’s taller. He’ll be wearing a white top hat.”

  A crowd of people hurried out to the street. The gentleman was nowhere to be seen. Léonie frowned.

  “Good for nothing!” she muttered. “I’ll either have to go home alone or ask someone to come with me.”

  “Why don’t you sleep here?” Augusta suggested. “We can easily put you up. You won’t be as comfortable as in your own house, but a night goes by so quickly—”

  No, it couldn’t be done! She had to go home tonight; someone was going to call on her first thing in the morning.

  At that moment, Pombinha and Dona Isabel arrived. They were quickly informed of Léonie’s visit, and Pombinha left her mother at number fifteen and, glowing with pleasure, headed for Alexandre’s house. They were very fond of each other. Léonie welcomed the girl with cries of delight and kissed her lips and eyelids again and again.

  “So, my beauty, how have you been?” she asked, looking her up and down.

  “I’ve missed you,” the girl replied, her still-pure mouth opening as she sweetly laughed.

  They were soon deep in conversation, while the other women listened. Léonie handed Pombinha a charm she had brought her: a tiny silver slice of cheese with a mouse atop it. It was passed around, amid giggles and exclamations.

  “If you’d waited a little longer, you wouldn’t have seen me,” the cocotte continued. “If the gentleman who was supposed to call for me had arrived on time, I’d be far away.” And changing her tone as she stroked the girl’s hair, she asked, “Why don’t you ever visit me? Don’t be scared; my house is very peaceful and quiet. Families sometimes call on me!”

  “I almost never go downtown,” Pombinha sighed.

  “Come tomorrow with your mother. I’ll give you both supper.”

  “If she’ll let me. Look! Here she comes! Ask her !”

  Dona Isabel promised to go—not tomorrow but the day after, which was Sunday. The conversation remained lively for another quarter of an hour until Léonie’s young man arrived. He was scarcely older than twenty, without a career or an inheritance but impeccably dressed and very good looking. As soon as the cocotte spied him, she whispered to Pombinha, “There’s no need for him to know you’ll visit me on Sunday, understand?”

  Juju was asleep. They decided not to wake her. She could return to Léonie’s house the next day.

  As Léonie walked out on her lover’s arm, escorted to the front gate by a crowd of washerwomen, Rita, who had stayed in the courtyard, pinched Jerônimo’s thigh and whispered, “Watch out or your jaw’ll drop right off your face.”

  The foreman scornfully shrugged his shoulders.

  “You must be kidding. She’s not my type!”

  And to make his preferences clear, he lifted his leg and gently kicked the mulatta’s calf with his clog.

  “Look at the swine!” she complained. “He can’t help showing he’s Portuguese!”

  X

  The next day, Miranda’s house bustled with preparations for a party. The Journal of Commerce announced that the Portuguese monarch had granted him the title of Baron of Freixal, and since his friends had been invited to congratulate him that Sunday, Miranda was preparing to welcome them in style.

  From the courtyard, where this piece of news caused a sensation, one could see Leonor and Isaura appear from time to time at the wide open windows, shaking rugs and straw mats, beating them with sticks, shutting their eyes against the clouds of dust that billowed forth like gunsmoke. Other servants had been hired for the occasion. In the front parlor, blacks were scrubbing the floor, and the kitchen was in an uproar. Dona Estela, in a cambric dressing gown adorned with pink bows, could be glimpsed flitting to and fro as she gave orders, cooling herself with a big fan. Or she would appear at the head of the back stairs, anxiously lifting her skirts to protect them from the dirty water that ran down into the yard. Zulmira also came and went, cold and pale as ever. Henrique, wearing a white jacket, helped Botelho arrange the furniture and occasionally went to the window and ogled Pombinha, who pretended not to notice, busy with her sewing outside the door to number fifteen, where she sat in a wicker chair with her legs crossed, showing her blue silk stockings and low black shoes. Once in a great while, she raised her eyes from her work and looked up at the house. Meanwhile, the new baron’s corpulent, aging form, clad in a frock coat and top hat pushed back on his head, still carrying his umbrella, entered the house, crossed the dining room, and went into the pantry. Still panting for breath, he began looking around to see whether this or that item had arrived, tasting the wines from the demijohns, examining everything, hurrying about, barking orders, angrily scolding, demanding more haste, and finally leaving again, still in a hurry, getting back in the carriage that awaited him outside the door.

  “Hurry up! Let’s see if the fireworks are ready!”

  Almost without pause, men arrived bearing hampers of champagne, crates of port and French wine, kegs of beer, baskets and baskets of provisions, cans of
preserves. Others brought turkeys and suckling pigs, boxes of eggs, sides of mutton and pork. The windows filled with desserts hot from the stove and big clay or metal pans full of marinating meat ready for the oven. By the door to the kitchen a kid dangled, its legs spread, resembling a child who had been skinned and then hanged for some crime.

  The courtyard’s inhabitants had something else to think about too. Domingos, Florinda’s seducer, had disappeared during the night and another clerk had replaced him.

  When anyone asked João Romão what had happened, he snapped: “How should I know? I couldn’t wear him around my neck!”

  “But you promised to hand him over—” Marciana insisted. She looked as though she had aged ten years in the past twenty-four hours.

  “I know, but he slipped through my fingers! What can I do? You’ll just have to put up with it.”

  “Then give me the dowry!”

  “What dowry? Are you drunk?”

  “Drunk, huh? You’re both scum; one’s as bad as the other! Just wait till I fix you!”

  “Now don’t make me mad!”

  And João Romão turned on his heel to speak to Bertoleza.

  “Just wait, you bastard! God’ll punish you for what you did to me and my daughter!”

  But he didn’t look around, inured as he was to washerwomen’s curses. In any case, the rest of them seemed less indignant than the day before. The passage of one night had stripped the scandal of its novelty.

  Marciana and her daughter went to the local police station. She came back in an even worse mood, having been informed that nothing could be done unless the culprit reappeared. The two of them spent that entire Saturday walking around, visiting the ministry, various other police stations, and the offices of lawyers who all asked how much money she could spend on a trial and then brusquely dismissed her after learning that neither of them had much.

  The two, exhausted and wilting from the heat, returned to São Romão that afternoon just as the peddlers who lived there appeared with empty hampers or with the fruit they had been unable to sell downtown. Marciana was so furious that, without saying a word to her daughter, she flung open all the windows and ran to draw water to scrub the floor. She was beside herself.

  “Get the broom! Hurry up! Wash this pigsty! This damned house looks like it never gets cleaned! You shut the windows for an hour and it stinks to high heaven! Open that window! God, what a stench!”

  And noticing that her daughter was weeping, she added, “Now you’re crying, huh? But a few months ago you were having the time of your life!”

  The daughter sobbed.

  “Shut up, you slut! Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

  Florinda’s sobs grew louder.

  “Ah, so you’re crying over nothing. Wait a minute, I’ll give you something to cry about!”

  And she leapt at the girl.

  But Florinda dashed out the door and across the courtyard and ran out into the street.

  No one had time to stop her, and a commotion like a disturbed henhouse spread among the washerwomen.

  Crazed with grief, Marciana staggered to the gate and, realizing that her daughter had forsaken her, she opened her arms and also began to weep, staring into space. Tears trickled down the wrinkles on her face. And then, with no transition, she abandoned the rage that had convulsed her all day and surrendered to the tender sorrow of a mother who has lost her child.

  “God in heaven, where has she gone?”

  “You’ve been beating her ever since yesterday!” Rita said. “Of course she ran away, and a good thing too! What the hell did you expect? She’s made of flesh and blood, not iron!”

  “My daughter!”

  “She did right! Now go cry in bed where it’s nice and warm!”

  “My daughter! My daughter!”

  No one took the poor woman’s side except Bruxa, who came and stood by her, peering at her intently.

  Marciana roused herself from her thoughts and approached the store. Drawing herself up to her full height, she glared at it, her hand waving in the air and her kinky hair disheveled. “This Portuguese bastard’s to blame for everything! If you don’t do right by my daughter, I’ll burn your house down!”

  Bruxa smirked at the sound of these last words.

  João Romão opened the door and coldly told Marciana to vacate number twelve.

  “Get out! I don’t need to listen to this crap! Now shut up or I’ll call the cops! I’ll give you one night! Tomorrow morning, you’d better be out of here!”

  Ah! That day he had no patience with anyone or anything. More than once he’d insulted Bertoleza simply because she’d asked some question about her chores. She’d never seen him so furious—he, who was usually so calm and self-controlled.

  No one would have guessed that the cause of his bad humor was Miranda’s new title.

  But such was the case! That tavern-keeper, apparently so wretched and humble, that skinflint who dressed as poorly as a slave in a cheap shirt and wooden clogs; that animal who ate worse than a dog so he could set aside everything he earned or extorted; that miser devoured by greed who seemed to have renounced all his privileges and sentiments as a human being; that poor devil who had never loved anything but money now envied Miranda, envied him with all his heart, twice as bitterly as Miranda had once envied him. He had observed Miranda since the day he and his family had moved into the house; he had seen him on important occasions, full of himself, surrounded by adulation; he’d seen him throw parties, welcoming important merchants and politicians; he’d seen him like a big golden top, spinning among elegant ladies and Rio’s high society; he’d watched him get involved in risky ventures and acquit himself well; he’d seen his name figure on lists of patrons and donors, contributing splendid sums; he’d seen him at charity benefits, balls, and patriotic celebrations; he’d seen him glorified by the press, praised as a man of vision and financial acumen—in other words, he’d seen every aspect of his prosperity and had never felt envious. But now, when the tavern-keeper read in the Journal of Commerce that his neighbor would become a baron—a baron!—the blood rushed to his head and his vision blurred.

  That was the only thing he could think about all day. A baron! He hadn’t expected that! And his obsession turned everything into heraldic coats of arms and titles. Even a modest two pennies’ worth of butter that he measured out on a piece of paper for a customer was transformed from a simple yellow blotch into an opulent gold insignia adorned with diamonds.

  That night, when he lay down in bed next to Bertoleza, he found that he couldn’t sleep. The sordid room’s filthy walls, its floor coated with grime, its gloomy ceiling covered by cobwebs glittered with tiny points of light that gradually turned into knightly crosses, medals, and decorations of every shape and kind. And around his spirit, infatuated by such matters for the first time, swirled all the grand and glorious things he scarcely knew of and had trouble imagining: waves of silk and lace, velvet, pearls, the necks and arms of half-naked women, gay tinkling laughter, and the dewy effervescence of sparkling wines. Evening gowns and swallow-tailed coats whirled in a cloud to the sound of waltzes and by the multicolored light of vast candelabra. Dazzling carriages rode past, with coats of arms emblazoned above their doors and stiff liveried coachmen whipping pairs of handsome steeds. Tables stretched away, heaped with delicacies, in a delightful jumble of flowers, lights, silverware, and crystal, approached from either side by ranks of revelers each holding a goblet and all toasting their host.

  And since João Romão had no firsthand knowledge of such things but had merely read and heard the most fatuous descriptions, he was dazzled by his own imaginings. Everything he saw in his delirium had until then only come to his eyes and ears as the reflections and echoes of an unattainable, distant world: a world inhabited by superior beings, a paradise of marvelous and exquisite pleasures unfit for his vulgar senses, a refined and delicate mingling of vaporous sounds and colors, a picture full of pastel shades and ill-defined forms, in which he cou
ld not distinguish a rose petal from a butterfly’s wing, a whispering breeze from the brush of a kiss.

  And there was Bertoleza, snoring away beside him, heavy, open-mouthed, exhausted by her labors, smelling of sweat, raw onions, and rancid oil.

  But João Romão didn’t notice her; all he saw and felt was that voluptuous, inaccessible world descending earthward, more sharply defined as it came within his grasp. The vague shadows took shape, the buzzing voices crystallized into words, and the outlines grew clearer, like nature reviving in the morning light. Tenuous sighing murmurs turned into an orchestra playing at a ball; he could make out the instruments. Those dull, indefinite noises were now animated conversations where ladies and gentlemen discussed politics, art, literature, and science. An entire life unfolded before his fascinated eyes: a noble life, luxurious and sumptuous, a life lived in palaces amid costly furnishings and splendid objects, where he was surrounded by titled millionaires with ceremonial sashes, all of whom he addressed by their first names, treating them as his equals and laying his hand upon their shoulders. There he was not and never had been the owner of a slum who went about in clogs and a cheap shirt; he was a baron! A baron of gold! A baron of grandeur! A baron worth millions! A tavern-keeper? You must be joking! A wealthy businessman! A mighty proprietor! A banker whose capital sustained the earth, like an immense globe balanced upon a column of gold coins. He saw himself straddling this globe, trying to clasp it with his short legs, a crown on his head and a scepter in his hand. And from all corners of the room cascades of pounds sterling jetted forth, while at his feet pygmies bustled about in frenzied activity. Vessels unloaded piles and piles of bales and crates all stamped with his initials; telegrams flashed electrically about his head; steamships of all nationalities circled his colossal body, whistling and pitching; swift trains traversed him, piercing him with their lines of cars.