Nonetheless, he stayed at home, lying down and quickly dropping off to sleep. His wife helped him into bed and, as soon as she heard him snoring, she brushed away the flies, covered his face with a piece of cambric she usually spread on top of her baskets of ironed clothes, and tiptoed out, leaving the door ajar.
They sat down to supper two hours later. Jerônimo ate with a hearty appetite and downed a bottle of wine. They spent the next few hours talking, seated outside their house, with Rita and Machona’s family, enjoying the free and easy atmosphere of a Sunday evening. Women suckled their babies in the courtyard, showing off their full breasts to all and sundry. Their happy chatter mingled with the sound of squawking parrots. Children ran by, some laughing and some crying; the Italians noisily digested their holiday meal; songs, guffaws, and curses could be heard. Augusta, who was seven months pregnant, solemnly paraded her belly, holding another child in her arms. Albino, installed in front of the house that faced his own, composed a picture out of little figures cut from matchboxes and glued onto cardboard backing. Above them, at one of Miranda’s windows, João Romão, dressed in a cream-colored suit and a fashionable puff tie, comfortable by now with elegant clothes and refined conversation, chatted with Zulmira, who smiled demurely as she stood beside him tossing bread crumbs down to the hens in the courtyard. The tavern-keeper cast an occasional scornful glance at the rabble who had made him rich, who went on toiling from sunup to sundown, and whose sole ambitions were to eat, sleep, and procreate.
At dusk, Jerônimo set out, as he had arranged, for Pepé’s Tavern. His two friends were waiting for him. Unfortunately, there were other customers as well. The three of them ordered rum and spoke in whispers, leaning so close to each other that their beards brushed.
“Where are the clubs?” the foreman asked.
“Over there, by those barrels—” Pataca whispered, pointing discreetly to a rolled-up straw mat. “They’re not too big—about this long.”
And he held his hand against his chest.
“I’ve been soaking them till now,” he added with a wink.
“Good!” said Jerônimo, draining the last drop from his glass. “Where should we go now? It’s still too early for Bantam’s Bar.”
“You’re right,” Pataca replied. “Let’s hang around here awhile. When we get there, I’ll go in and you can wait for me outside. If the nigger’s not there I’ll come out and tell you, and if he’s there I’ll stick around—I’ll start talking with him, get in a fight and finally ask him to step outside. He’ll fall for it, and then you two can join the party, like it was all an accident! How does that sounds?”
“Perfect!” Jerônimo exclaimed and then shouted; “Another round!”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of bills.
“Drink up!” he said. “I’ve got plenty of dough!”
As he sorted through the bills, he pulled out four twenty mil-réis notes.
“These are for the payoff. They’re sacred!” he added, tucking them into his left pocket.
Then he threw another bill down on the table; “And this is to celebrate our victory!”
“Bravo!” shouted Zé Carlos. “That’s what I call a real sport! I’m with you all the way!”
Pataca suggested that they order a few beers.
“I don’t want any,” Jerônimo said, “but go ahead if you feel like it.”
“I’d like some white wine,” Zé Carlos interjected.
“Whatever you’re in the mood for.” Jerônimo replied. “I’ll have some wine myself. I didn’t earn this money slitting people’s throats! No! I earned it working like a dog, rain or shine, by the sweat of my brow! I can throw it around how I like; my conscience is clean!”
“To your health!” Zé Carlos exclaimed when their next round of drinks appeared. “May you never again have to see a doctor!”
“Here’s to you, Jerônimo!” the other concurred.
Jerônimo thanked them and said, once their glasses had been refilled: “To my friends from back home who’ll help me get even!”
And he drank.
“To Piedade de Jesus!” Pataca added.
“Thank you!” the foreman replied, rising to his feet. “Now, let’s get going! We can’t stay here all night! It’s almost eight o’clock!”
The others downed what was left of their drinks and got up to leave.
“It’s still pretty early . . .” Zé Carlos muttered, spitting to one side and wiping his mustache with the back of his hand.
“But maybe we’ll have some trouble on the way,” his companion warned, going to fetch the straw mat with the clubs in it.
“Anyhow, let’s go,” Jerônimo said, resolving the issue impatiently, as though he feared the night would slip through his fingers.
He paid for their drinks, and the three of them set out, hurrying as though driven along by a strong wind that made them stride forward more quickly from time to time. They followed Rua de Sorocaba and then turned toward the beach, whispering to each other excitedly. They only stopped when they got near Bantam’s Bar.
“You’re going to go in, right?” the foreman asked Pataca.
Pataca replied by handing him the clubs and walking away with his hands in his pockets, staring at his feet and pretending to be drunker than he was.
XV
There was a good-sized crowd at Bantam’s Bar that night. Around a dozen rough-hewn, wooden tables covered with tin painted to resemble marble, sat groups of three or four men, almost all with their sleeves rolled up, smoking and drinking amid terrific din. The most popular beverages were local beer, new wine, straight rum, and rum flavored with orange peel. The floor was strewn with sand amid which one could spot an occasional cheese rind, scrap of liver, or fishbone, making it clear that people ate as well as drank there. And indeed, toward the back beside the bar and among the racks of unopened bottles, stood a table bearing a platter of roast beef and potatoes, a big ham, and several portions of fried sardines. Two kerosene lanterns blackened the ceiling. And from a door covered by a red curtain that separated the bar from the back room, a blast of shouts issued from time to time in waves that seemed to die away in the dive’s dense, smoky atmosphere.
Pataca halted at the entrance, swaying and pretending to be drunk as he glanced at different groups, searching for Firmo’s face. He couldn’t find him, but someone at a certain table caught his eye. She was a slender black girl sitting with an old woman who was almost blind and a bald man who suffered from asthma and from time to time shook the table with a coughing fit, making the glasses rattle.
Pataca clapped the girl on the shoulder.
“How are you, Florinda?”
She looked up and laughed. She said she was fine and asked how he was doing.
“I’m all right. What happened to you? I haven’t seen you in a month!”
“That’s right. I hardly go out now that I’m with Seu Bento.”
“Ah!” said Pataca. “So you’ve got someone to take care of you? That’s great!”
“I always did!”
And, feeling expansive after the beer she had drunk and on that relaxed Sunday evening, she told him that the day of her flight from São Romão she had spent the night at a construction site on Travessa da Passagem and the next day, going from door to door looking for work as a maid or dry nurse, she had met an old bachelor loaded with dough who had taken her in.
“That’s swell!” Pataca replied.
But the old devil was shameless. He gave her lots of presents, even money, dressed and fed her well but he wanted her to do all kinds of things! They started quarreling. And since the grocer on the corner was always trying to get her to come and live with him, one day she showed up with whatever she’d managed to steal off the old man.
“So now you’re living with the grocer?”
No! The crook, with the excuse that he suspected her of fooling around with a cabinetmaker named Bento, threw her out, keeping everything she’d brought from the other’s house a
nd leaving her with nothing but the clothes on her back—and sick too from an abortion she’d had after moving in with the swine. Then Bento had taken her in, and thank God, for the moment she had nothing to complain about.
Pataca glanced around as though he were searching for someone, and Florinda, assuming he was looking for her man, added, “He’s not around; he’s inside. When he’s gambling he doesn’t like me to hang around; he says I bring him bad luck.”
“And your mother?”
“Poor thing! She’s in the nuthouse!”
She began talking about old Marciana, but Pataca paid no attention because at that moment the red curtain opened and Firmo emerged, very drunk, lurching from side to side, trying unsuccessfully to count a wad of small bills that he finally rolled up and stuffed in his pants pocket.
“Hey Porfiro! Come on!” he shouted over his shoulder, slurring his syllables.
After waiting in vain for a reply, he took a few steps forward.
Pataca muttered “See you later” and, acting dead drunk again, staggered toward the mulatto.
They collided.
“Oh!” Pataca exclaimed. “Excuse me!”
Firmo scowled, but his face cleared as soon as he recognized the other man.
“Oh, it’s you, Portuguese! How’s it going? Stolen anything good lately?”
“Not as good as your grandmother used to steal! Let’s have a drink. You want one?”
“What are you having?”
“How about a beer?”
“Fine.”
They approached the bar.
“Two Old Guards, kid!” Pataca shouted.
Firmo pulled out some money to pay.
“I’ll take care of it,” the other said. “It was my idea.”
But since Firmo insisted, Pataca let him pay.
Two coins rolled along the floor, having slipped from Firmo’s hand.
“What time is it?” Pataca asked, squinting at the clock on the wall. “Eight-thirty. Let’s have another, but this one’s on me!”
They drank for a while, and then Jerônimo’s accomplice said: “Boy, you’re really loaded today! You don’t look too happy either. You’re too drunk to walk.”
“Troubles . . .” the capoeira expert grunted, trying to expel the thick saliva that coated his tongue.
“Wipe your chin, it’s got spit on it. What kind of troubles? I bet it’s some woman!”
“Rita didn’t show up today! And I know why!”
“Why?”
“Because that bastard Jerônimo came home!”
“Oh, I didn’t know that! So she’s mixed up with him?”
“She’s not, and she never will be! When I leave here I’m going to look for him and fix him once and for all.”
“Got a weapon?”
Firmo drew a knife from his shirt.
“Put that away! You shouldn’t flash that thing in here! Those people are staring at us!”
“I don’t give a damn about them! They’d better not look too hard or I’ll give them a demonstration.”
“A cop just came in! Get rid of that knife!”
The thug stared at his companion, surprised at the suggestion.
“I mean, so if they grab you, you won’t have a blade . . .”
“Grab who? Me? Come off it!”
“Is it a good one? Let me see!”
“Nothing doing!”
“Come on, you know I don’t go in for that kind of stuff!”
“Forget it! I’m not letting this out of my hands—not even for my own father!”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone!”
“You know who I saw a little while ago? You’ll never guess!”
“Who?”
“Rita.”
“Where?”
“Down on Saudade Beach.”
“With who?”
“With some guy I didn’t recognize.”
Firmo sprang to his feet and staggered toward the door. “Wait,” the other mumbled, stopping him. “If you want I’ll come with you. But we’ll have to be careful, because if she spots us she’ll take off.”
Paying no attention to this observation, Firmo headed for the door, bumping into every table in his path. Pataca caught up with him in the street and slipped his arm affectionately around his waist.
“Slow down,” he said, “or you’ll scare her away.”
The beach was deserted. It was drizzling. A chilly breeze blew off the water. The starless sky was a deep, flat black. The lights across the bay seemed to flicker within the water like phosphorescent seaweed, submerging their tenuous rays beneath the waves.
“Where is she?” asked Firmo, barely able to keep his balance.
“Up ahead, near those rocks. Keep going and you’ll see her.”
They kept walking, but suddenly two faces loomed up out of the darkness. Pataca recognized them and grabbed the mulatto, pinning his arms to his sides.
“Get his legs!” he shouted to the others.
The two men, gripping their clubs between their teeth, seized Firmo, who struggled to break loose.
By letting them grab him, he had sealed his fate.
When Pataca saw the mulatto held firmly around the arms and legs, he disarmed him.
“Good! Now we’ve got him!”
And he took his own club.
They released Firmo, who, as soon as his feet touched the ground, struck one of the assailants with his head at the same time that a blow landed on the back of his neck. He shouted and spun around, staggering a little. Another blow fell on his back, followed by another to the kidneys and still another on his thigh. Another, harder this time, broke his collarbone, another cracked his skill, another struck his spine, and others rained down faster and faster till they turned into a continuous torrent to which he put up no resistance, rolling on the sand while blood flowed from a dozen spots on his body.
The rain fell harder. Beneath that relentless downpour he seemed frailer, as though he were melting away. He looked like a mouse being beaten to death with a stick. A slight convulsive trembling was all that showed he was still alive. The other three kept silent, panting and striking him again and again, overcome by an irresistable thirst for blood, a wish to mangle and destroy that hunk of flesh that groaned at their feet. Finally, exhausted, they dragged him to the edge of the water and threw him in. Gasping for breath, they fled helter-skelter across the beach, heading back toward the city.
The rain was coming down hard and fast. They didn’t stop till they reached a stand in Catete. They were soaked. They ordered rum and gulped it down as though it were water. It was past eleven. They walked along Lapa Beach. Covered with sweat and rain, Jerônimo halted beneath a streetlamp.
“Here you are,” he said, pulling four bills from his pocket. “Two apiece. And now, let’s find someplace dry and something hot to drink.”
“There’s a bar up there,” said Pataca, pointing to Rua da Glória.
They climbed the steps leading up from the beach, and soon they were seated around a wrought-iron table. They ordered food and drink, talking slowly and haltingly. They were exhausted.
At one o’clock in the morning, the owner turned them out. Fortunately, the rain had abated. The three of them set off for Batofogo. As they were walking, Jerônimo asked Pataca to give him Firmo’s knife if he still had it. His companion relinquished it without objection.
“I want something to remember that bastard by,” the foreman explained, tucking it under his shirt.
They split up outside São Romão. Jerônimo entered quietly. He approached his house; there was a light on in the bedroom. He realized that his wife had been waiting up for him; perhaps she was still awake. He imagined he could smell her sour odor coming from within. He screwed up his face and made for Rita’s house, where he knocked softly on the door.
Rita had gone to bed anxious and frightened. Having stood her lover up, she marveled at her own imprudence. How had she found the courage to do some
thing—just at the most dangerous moment—that she had never before been able to bring herself to do? Deep inside, she dreaded Firmo. At first she had loved him. because they were so much alike, because both of them were so hot-blooded. She had gone on seeing him out of habit, the kind of bad habit one curses but cannot break. But ever since Jerônimo had fallen in love with her, fascinating her with his calm seriousness, like that of a strong, kindly animal, the mulatta’s blood cried out for purification by a male of nobler race, the European. The foreman, for his part, seduced and transformed by his environment, had come to loathe his wife, whose origins so resembled his own. He desired the mulatta because the mulatta was pleasure, was voluptuousness, was the tart, golden fruit of the American wilds where his soul had learned to imitate a monkey’s lasciviousness, while his body had come to ooze a he-goat’s randy smell.
They loved each other with savage passion: They both knew that. Their irrational, empirical love had grown more intense, on both sides, after the fight with Firmo. In Rita’s eyes, Jerônimo took on the aura of a martyr to the woman he loved. He seemed to grow taller after that stabbing, ennobled by all the blood he had lost. And afterward, his stay in the hospital had completed the crystallization, as though the foreman had entered a tomb, drawing after him all the longing of those who mourned his loss.
Meanwhile, a similar process was occurring in Jerônimo. To risk his life for somebody, taking responsibility for a love to which he had surrendered body and soul—the woman for whom one makes such a sacrifice, whomever she may be, suddenly assumes the proportions of an ideal in one’s fantasies. The immigrant had fallen in love with the Bahian at first sight, because in her he sensed the synthesis of all the torrid mysteries, the Brazilian sensuality that had snared him and created her. He loved her even more after risking his life for her, and he adored her madly during his painful loneliness in the hospital, where all his moans and sighs had been for her alone.
The mulatta knew how he felt but lacked the courage to confess that she was hopelessly in love with him too. She was afraid for his sake. Now, after her insane decision to stand Firmo up on the very day Jerônimo returned to São Romão, the situation seemed truly perilous. Firmo, furious at her absence, would get drunk and come around spoiling for another fight. The two men would go at each other again, and one or both of them would wind up dead. All that remained of her feelings toward Firmo was dread—not the dread she had felt before, vague and indeterminate, but real terror that tormented her and filled her with foreboding. Firmo no longer appeared in her imagination as a violent, jealous lover but as a simple thug, armed with an old, treacherous, deadly knife. Her fear had turned into a mixture of revulsion and horror. Unable to fall asleep, she was lying there worrying when she heard a knock at the door.
The Slum (Library of Latin America) Page 18