The Slum (Library of Latin America)

by Aluisio Azevedo

  “Tell her . . .”

  He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “Tell her . . . no, that’s it!”

  “So I can seal the letter?”

  “Yeah,” the blacksmith muttered, still trying to make up his mind. “No, wait! Tell her that . . .”

  “What?”

  A silence followed, during which the poor wretch seemed to tear out of himself a phrase that, in fact, was his sole reason for writing to Leocádia. Finally, after scratching his head even harder, he stammered in a voice that was half a strangled sob: “Tell her if she wants to come back and live with me . . . I’ll take her in. All is forgiven!”

  Pombinha, noticing the change in his voice, looked up and saw the tears trickling down his face in twos and threes till they vanished in the bristly thicket of his beard. And strangely enough, she, who had written so many letters of this sort and witnessed the tears of so many workers at São Romão, was shaken by the blacksmith’s anguished sobs.

  Because only when the sun had blessed her womb, only when she had felt the blood of womanhood stir within her, was she capable of seeing those violent torments poets adorn with the name of love. Her understanding, like her body, blossomed unexpectedly in a burst of lucidity that surprised and moved her more than the physical change. At that moment, the world suddenly opened to her gaze, revealing its secret passions. Now, staring at Bruno’s tears, she understood the weakness in men, the fragility of those brutes with their bulging muscles and heavy tread, who let themselves be yoked and led by a woman’s delicate hand.

  That flower of the slums, escaping the stupidity amid which she had been raised, was doomed to fall prey to her own intelligence. Lacking a good education, her mind groped in the dark and betrayed her, forcing her to induce from the fantasies of an ignorant but clever girl the explanations for everything no one had taught her to understand.

  Bruno left with his letter. Pombinha, resting her elbows on the table with her face between her hands, began to think about men.

  What strange power did a woman possess, forcing men who had been dishonored and cuckolded to come crawling back, apologizing for the evil she had done them?

  She smiled—a smile already full of contempt and malice.

  A flood of scenes that she had never tried to analyze and that had lain forgotten in the twistings and turnings of her past now came back to her, clear and vivid. She understood how it was that certain respectable old gents, whose photos Léonie had shown her during the day they had spent together, could let the strumpet rule them, enslaved and submissive, paying for their slavery as though it were an honor with their wealth and even their lives if, having squeezed them dry, she denied them her body. Pombinha went on smiling, proud in her superiority to that other sex of self-important windbags who deemed themselves lords of the earth, on which they had been placed merely to serve women—those ridiculous slaves who, in order to have a little fun, had to delude themselves, while their queens calmly enjoyed their power, deified and adored, devising torments that the poor devils gladly accepted, kissing the feet that walked all over them, the implacable hands that strangled them.

  “Ah, men! Men!” she whispered, with a puzzled sigh.

  She returned to her sewing, letting her thoughts wander where they would, while her hands went on mechanically embroidering the pillowcase on which her lips would receive their first nuptial kisses.

  In a single glance, like one holding a sphere between the points of a compass, she measured, with the help of her feminine intuition, that entire dungheap over which she had crawled so long as a larva until one fine day she had awakened a bright butterfly. And she envisioned that teeming mass of males and females, clawing at each other greedily, smothering one another. She saw Firmo and Jerônimo tearing at each other like two dogs fighting over a mongrel bitch; she saw Miranda next door, his sluttish wife’s obedient servant, dancing to her tune while she cuckolded him right and left; she saw Domingos sneaking out, sacrificing a night’s sleep after a back-breaking day’s work, throwing away his job and all the money he had scraped together just for a few minutes’ pleasure between the legs of some stupid girl; and again she saw Bruno weeping over his wife, and other blacksmiths, gardeners, stonecutters, and workers of every sort, an army of sensual beasts whose secrets she was privy to, whose most private correspondence she scrutinized every day, whose hearts she knew like the palm of her hand, because the room where she wrote their letters was like a confessional, where all manner of flotsam, driftwood, and excrement washed ashore, foaming with grief and wet with tears.

  In her sickly and twisted soul, in her rebellious spirit, a pale violet, rare and delicate, raised in a dung heap whose manure proved too strong for her to bear, she realized that she would never give herself to her husband, that he would never win her friendship and devotion, that she would never respect him as a superior being for whom she might sacrifice her life. She would never throw her lot in with his, and consequently she would never love him, though she felt she could love someone, if there were men worthy of her love. No; she would never love him, for Costa was like all the others, passively accepting the life that circumstances forced upon him, without goals, without the courage to rebel, without driving ambitions, without tragic vices, incapable of glorious crimes. He was just another animal whose purpose was to procreate—a poor fool who adored her blindly and who, sooner or later, rightly or wrongly, would shed those same ridiculous, hot, shameful tears she had seen rolling down Bruno’s cheeks into his rough, scrubbly beard.

  Until that moment, marriage had been her most cherished dream. But now, on the eve of her wedding, she felt disgusted at the thought of surrendering to her fiancé, and, had it not been for her mother, she would have broken off the engagement.

  A week later, however, São Romão bustled with excitement. From the moment they rose, people spoke of her wedding, and every gaze revealed thoughts of Pombinha’s bridal bed. Rose petals were strewn outside her door. At eleven that morning, a carriage stopped outside the front gate. A fat lady dressed in pearl-gray silk sat inside it. She was the matron of honor, who had come to take her to Saint John the Baptist’s Church. The ceremony would take place at midday. The onlookers, dumbfounded by all this pomp and circumstance, lined up outside number fifteen with their hands clasped behind their backs, their faces awed and respectful. Some smiled tenderly; almost all their eyes glistened with tears.

  Pombinha emerged, ready to take flight. She wore a veil held in place by a garland of flowers and was dressed entirely in white, vaporous and fair. Visibly moved, she bade her neighbors good-bye, blowing them kisses and clutching her bouquet of artificial flowers. Dona Isabel wept like a child, embracing her friends one by one.

  “May God make her a good wife,” Machona exclaimed, “and give her an easy labor when her first child comes!”

  The bride smiled and stared at the ground. A hint of a sneer seemed to play about the corners of her mouth. She headed for the gate, followed by the crowd’s blessings. Now they all began to really cry, delighted to see her so happy and about to assume the social station that befitted her.

  “No! She wasn’t born to live in a place like this!” Alexandre declared, twirling his glossy mustache. “It’d be a real shame if she’d had to stay here!”

  Old Libório cackled hoarsely and complained of that rascal Costa, who had tricked him and stolen away his girlfriend.

  Ungrateful bitch! Just when he’d been ready to do something stupid!

  Nenen ran after the bride, who was about to climb into the carriage, and, hurriedly kissing her on the lips, urged her not to forget to send her a bud from her garland of orange tree flowers.

  “They say it’s good luck if you want to get married! . . . And I’m so scared of ending up an old maid! I worry about it all the time!”

  XIII

  As soon as any tenant left São Romão, a crowd of candidates appeared, all squabbling over the vacant house. Delporto and Pompeo had been carried off by yellow fever,
and three other Italians’ lives were in danger. The number of inhabitants increased; each two-room house was subdivided into cubicles the size of coffins, and the women kept bearing children with the regularity of a herd of cows. A family consisting of a widowed mother and five unmarried daughters, the oldest of whom was thirty and the youngest fifteen, moved into the house Dona Isabel had vacated a few days after Pombinha’s wedding.

  Meanwhile, another slum sprang up on the same street; it was called “Cat Head.” Its apparent owner was a Portuguese who also ran a store and tavern, but it really belonged to a rich alderman of refined manners whose social standing forbade him to openly invest in such ventures. Bursting with rage, João Romão feared that this new concentration of squalor would compete with his own establishment. Alarmed, he prepared for battle and began to attack his rival with all the weapons at his disposal, bribing inspectors and policemen to plague his new neighbors with fines and summonses, while he inculcated a deep hatred of Cat Head’s inhabitants among his tenants. Anyone who refused to go along was summarily evicted. “You’re either with us or against us! No fence-sitting allowed!” One need hardly add that the other side did everything possible to inflame things further, so that a tremendous rivalry grew up between the two slums, fostered by daily quarrels and incidents, especially among washerwomen fighting over customers. Within a short time, the two sides also had names: the inhabitants of Cat Head were dubbed cat-heads, after their dwelling place, while those from São Romão were christened “silver jennies,” after the most popular fish at Bertoleza’s stand.

  Anybody who was friends with a silver jenny could have nothing to do with cat-heads. Anyone who moved from one place to the other was condemned as a renegade, a traitor to his principles. To tell someone on the other side of any incident, however trivial, was to risk a beating. A fishmonger, who had foolishly told a cat-head about a quarrel between Machona and her daughter Das Dores, was discovered half dead near Saint John the Baptist Cemetery. Alexandre never missed a chance to strike at his foes; one of their names always appeared in his official reports. Both sides had their partisans among the local police; the cops who drank at João Romão’s tavern kept away from the other one. A yellow flag was hoisted in the middle of the courtyard at Cat Head; the silver jennies responded by hoisting a red banner. The two colors fluttered in the breeze like twin calls to arms.

  A battle was inevitable. It was just a matter of time.

  As soon as Cat Head was completed, Firmo left the room he had been staying in at his workplace and moved in with Porfiro—despite objections from Rita, who would have broken with him rather than betray her old comrades. A certain tension arose between the lovers; their meetings became rarer and more difficult. The Bahian would under no condition set foot in Cat Head, while Firmo was forbidden to enter São Romão. They had to meet secretly in a tenement apartment belonging to an old woman who sometimes rented them a room. Firmo insisted on staying at Cat Head, where he felt safe from reprisals for his stabbing. Besides, Jerônimo was still alive and, once he had recovered, he might come looking for him. Firmo quickly made friends with his new neighbors and became their leader. He was loved and venerated. They enjoyed his skill and admired his courage. They’d heard all the stories about his legendary exploits. Porfiro, his right hand man, never challenged his leadership, and the two of them inspired a healthy respect even among the silver jennies, some of whom were pretty damned tough themselves.

  But three months later, João Romão, seeing that his interests had not been damaged by the other slum and that, on the contrary, the influx of newcomers had worked to his advantage, went back to fretting about Miranda, the only rival who truly bothered him.

  In the time since his neighbor had been made a baron, the tavern-keeper had undergone an astonishing transformation, both externally and internally. He ordered fine clothes, and on Sunday donned a white jacket and proper shoes and socks. Thus attired, he sat in front of his store reading the newspapers. Then he would go out for a walk wearing his jacket, fancy boots, and a cravat. He gave up his crewcut and clipped his beard, almost eliminating his mustache, which was now waxed every time he visited the barber. He actually looked respectable! And he didn’t stop there: He joined a dancing club, where he took lessons two nights a week. He bought a watch and a gold chain. He had his bedroom plastered and painted, and a wooden floor was laid down. He bought some secondhand furniture and had a shower installed next to the toilet. He began to use a napkin when he ate; he purchased a tablecloth and goblets. He started drinking wine—not the cheap stuff he sold at his store but a special vintage he kept for his own use. On his days off, he strolled up and down the promenade or went to matinees at the São Pedro de Alcântara Theater. In addition to the Journal of Commerce, which three years ago had been the only newspaper he read, he subscribed to two others and bought installments of French novels translated into Portuguese. These he read from cover to cover, with saintly patience, in the charming conviction that he was improving his mind.

  He hired three more clerks. He rarely waited upon the blacks who came to shop, and indeed he was hardly seen behind the counter at his store. He was, however, a frequent presence on Rua Direita, at the stock exchange and in banks, his top hat pushed back and an umbrella tucked under his arm. He began to get involved in bigger deals: He purchased bonds offered by English companies and financed mortgages.

  Miranda treated him differently, tipping his hat when they met and stopping for a friendly chat in front of the store. He even invited João Romão to his wife’s birthday party. The tavern-keeper thanked him profusely but did not attend.

  Bertoleza played no part in João’s rise. She was still the same filthy Negress, weighed down by drudgery every day of the week. She shared none of his newfound amusements. On the contrary, as he climbed the social ladder, she seemed even more debased, like a horse left behind by a traveler who no longer needs it for his journey. Her spirits began to sag.

  Botelho also befriended João—even more than Miranda had. Whenever the leech set out, after lunch, to sit and chat at his favorite cigar store, and whenever he returned in time for supper, he would stop for a moment at his neighbor’s door and shout: “Hey, Seu Romão, how’s everything going?” Some friendly greeting was always on his lips. The tavern-keeper would normally come out, shake his hand, and invite him in for a drink.

  Yes, João Romão was even willing to stand someone to a drink! But not just for the hell of it; he always had some purpose in mind. Till one afternoon, when the two of them were strolling down to the beach, Botelho, after speaking enthusiastically of his great friend the baron and his virtuous family, looked João in the eye and said: “That girl would suit you to a T, Seu João!”

  “Huh? What girl?”

  “Hey, listen! Don’t you think I’ve noticed you’re sweet on her? You can’t fool me!”

  The tavern-keeper tried to deny it, but the other man cut him short, “It’d be a good match! An excellent girl—she’s sweet-natured and well brought up; she even speaks French! She plays the piano, can sing a little, she’s had drawing lessons—she sews like an angel—and—”

  He lowered his voice and added, whispering in his friend’s ear, “That family’s solid as a rock. All their money’s in real estate and bank shares!”

  “Are you sure? You’ve seen it yourself?”

  “I certainly have! Word of honor!”

  They fell silent for a while.

  Then Botelho added, “Poor Miranda’s a good fellow. He has his delusions of grandeur, but you can’t blame him for that. It’s stuff he picked up from his wife. Anyhow, I think he’s well disposed toward you—and if you play your cards right, you can get his daughter.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t want me . . .”

  “What of it? A girl like her, brought up to obey her parents, isn’t going to say no. Get someone close to the family who can help you from the inside, and you’ll get what you want—someone like me, for example.”

  “Oh, no doubt,
if you got involved! They say Miranda never makes a move without your approval.”

  “That’s no lie.”

  “And you’re willing to . . . ?”

  “To help you? I sure am. That’s what we’re here for: to help each other out! But since I’m not rich—”

  “Don’t worry about that! You arrange this marriage and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “All right, all right—”

  “You don’t think I’d cheat you, do you?”

  “Heaven forbid! I’d never dream of such a thing!”

  “Well then . . .”

  “All right—Anyway, we can talk it over later—there’s no hurry!”

  And from then on, every time the two of them were alone together, they discussed their campaign to bag Miranda’s daughter. Botelho wanted twenty contos in advance; the other offered ten.

  “Well then, that’s that!” the old man declared. “See if you can do it yourself, but I’m warning you: Don’t count on my help. You understand?”

  “You mean you’ll be against me?”

  “God help me! I’m not against anyone! It’s you who’re against me, not giving me a crumb of the cake I’m going to pop into your mouth! Miranda’s worth more than a thousand contos! And you should realize this isn’t going to be as easy as you think—”

  “Hey! Now don’t get mad!”

  “The baron’s got a certain class of son-in-law in mind—a deputy—someone influential in politics!”

  “Why doesn’t he try for a prince? That’d be even better!”

  “There’s a doctor who’s had his eye on the girl and is always hanging around, and it seems like she’s sweet on him too—”

  “Well in that case, the best thing is to let them go ahead!”

  “Yes, it would be. I think it’d be easier for me to make a deal with him too.”

  “So let’s talk about something else. That’s enough of that!”