The Slum (Library of Latin America)

by Aluisio Azevedo

  The little girl’s burial was paid for by Léonie, who appeared at three in the afternoon, dressed in cream-colored sateen, in a cariole whose coachman wore white flannel breeches and a jacket trimmed with gold.

  Miranda entered the courtyard with a sorrowful but condescending air that morning. He offered João Romão a perfunctory embrace and whispered that he was sorry about what had happened but glad that everything had been insured.

  In fact, the first fire had made such an impression on the tavern-keeper and he had insured all his properties so thoroughly that the blaze, far from harming him, would bring in a tidy profit.

  “Well, my dear friend, every cloud has a silver lining!” São Romão’s owner whispered, laughing. “But I’m sure they didn’t think it was so funny!” he added, pointing to the crowd of tenants sizing up what remained of their wretched belongings.

  “What the hell do they care?” the other replied. “They’ve got nothing to lose!”

  The neighbors walked together to the end of the courtyard, still conversing in hushed voices.

  “I’m going to rebuild all this!” João Romão declared, gesturing energetically toward the sodden ruins of his slum.

  And he explained his plan: He was going to expand São Romão into the vacant lot in back, and on the left, up against Miranda’s wall, he would build another row of houses using part of the courtyard, which didn’t need to be so big. He would build a second story onto the others, with a long, railed veranda. He could make a lot more from four or five hundred houses, renting for twelve to twenty-five mil-réis, than from a hundred!

  Ah, he’d show everyone how to do things right!

  Miranda listened in silence, looking at him respectfully. “You’re a hell of a guy!” he finally exclaimed, clapping him on the shoulder.

  Miranda, who had never produced anything and had always taken it easy, who had spent his life exploiting the good faith of some and the clever ideas of others, left feeling full of admiration for his neighbor. What remained of his previous envy was transformed in that instant into boundless, blind enthusiasm.

  “What a guy!” he muttered as he walked down the street on the way to his store. “He’s got so much spunk! What a pity he’s mixed up with that nigger! I don’t know how such a smart fellow could do something so stupid!”

  It wasn’t till ten that night that João Romão, having assured himself that Bertoleza was sleeping like a log, decided to count the contents of Libório’s bottles. The hell of it was that he was dead on his feet too and could barely keep his eyes open. But he couldn’t rest till he found out how much he’d stolen from the miser.

  He lit a candle, went to fetch the filthy and precious bundle, and lugged it into the eating-house next to the kitchen.

  He laid everything out on one of the tables, sat down, and set to work. He picked up the first bottle and tried to empty it by slapping the bottom. He found, however, that he would have to extract the bills one by one, as they were wadded together. As he drew them out, he carefully unrolled and unfolded them and laid them neatly in a pile, after drying them in the heat from his hands and the candle. The enjoyment he derived from this task reawakened all his senses and banished fatigue from his body. But when he turned to the second bottle, he suffered a painful disappointment: the bills were so old that they could no longer be redeemed, and he began to worry that perhaps most of his jackpot would prove worthless. He still had hopes, however, for that bottle might have been the oldest and consequently the worst.

  He continued his delightful task even more excitedly.

  He had emptied six when he noticed that the candle, nothing but a flickering stub, was about to go out. He got up to fetch another and glanced at the clock. “My God! How quickly the night’s gone by!” It was three-thirty in the morning. “I can’t believe it!”

  As he finished counting, he heard the first wagon rumble by outside.

  “Fifteen contos, four-hundred and some odd mil-réis!” he muttered, staring and staring at the stack of bills in front of him.

  But eight contos and four hundred mil-réis were worthless. At the sight of this sum, so stupidly wasted, he felt as indignant as if he had been robbed. He cursed that damned fool Libório for his carelessness; he cursed the government that, with villainous intent, placed expiration dates on its money. He even regretted not having seized the miser’s loot when, one of the first residents at São Romão, he had appeared with his mattress on his back, begging João for a corner to sleep in. João Romão had smelt and coveted that money ever since he had first peered into the decrepit buzzard’s beady eyes and seen how swiftly he pocketed any coin within reach.

  “It would have been an act of justice!” he concluded. “At least I would have kept that money from rotting away and being no use to anybody!”

  “Well, it’s too late now!” But almost seven contos were still legal tender. “And anyway, I’ll get rid of the others if I play my cards right! Today I’ll palm off a couple of mil-réis; tomorrow another five, not when I buy stuff but when I’m giving change. Why not? Someone’s bound to complain, but lots of them won’t notice. That’s what hicks and foreigners are for! . . . And besides, it’s not illegal! Hell! If somebody gets swindled, let them complain about the government; it’s the government that cheated them!”

  “Anyway,” he thought, carefully putting away the good bills and the bad, “I’ll have enough to start work. A few days from now, they’ll see what I can do!”

  XIX

  And indeed, a few days later São Romão bustled with activity. The disorder left by the fire was replaced by an equally chaotic construction site. Workers hammered away from morning to night, while the women went right on pounding clothes and others ironed, adding their shrill, weepy songs to the racket.

  Those who had been left without roofs over their heads were billeted wherever space could be found while they waited for their new homes. No one moved to Cat Head.

  Construction began on Miranda’s side of the courtyard. The old tenants were housed first and offered reduced rents. One of the wounded Italians died in a charity hospital; the other’s life was still in danger. Bruno was at a hospital belonging to his fraternal order, and Leocádia, who had not answered the letter written by Pombinha, resolved to pay him a visit. The poor devil was so happy to see her again—that woman who had abused him so badly but whose flesh was so firm and with whom, despite everything, he was still madly in love. They wept and made up, and Leocádia decided to return to São Romão and live with him again. She assumed a very respectable air and threatened to slap anyone who made impertinent remarks.

  Though Piedade recovered from her fever, she was not the same woman. She grew thin and haggard, her face lost its color, she was downhearted and always in a bad mood, but she didn’t complain and never uttered her husband’s name.

  Life in the slum was different during those months of construction. São Romão had lost its old character, so sharply defined and yet so varied. Now it seemed like a big improvised office, an arsenal whose din forced people to communicate in sign language. The washerwomen moved their operations to the lot out back, because the sawdust—and the dust in general—soiled their clean clothes. When the construction was completed, they saw to their amazement that João Romão’s store and squalid tavern, where he had grown to be a big shot, were next in line. He decided to use only some of the walls, the thickest ones; he would broaden the doors into arches, raise the ceilings, and build a house taller than Miranda’s and far more imposing. It would have four windows looking out onto the street and eight on each side, with a terrace in back. The room he slept in with Bertoleza, the kitchen and the eating-house would become a single room, forming, along with the tavern, a big store where his business could grow and flourish.

  The baron and Botelho dropped by nearly every day, both very intrigued by their neighbor’s prosperity. They examined all the construction materials, they poked the pine planks from Riga, destined to be floorboards, with the tips of their um
brellas, and, pretending to be great experts, they picked up handfuls of the earth and lime João’s workers used to make mortar and let it sift through their fingers. They even scolded the employees, finding fault with their workmanship. João Romão, who now always wore a tie and jacket, white trousers, and a vest complete with pocket watch, never entered his store and only supervised the construction in his spare moments. He was away all day, learning the ins and outs of the stock exchange. He dined in expensive hotels and drank beer as he sat around chatting with other capitalists in the cafés they frequented.

  And Bertoleza? What would become of her?

  This was precisely what both the baron and Botelho were dying to know. Yes, because that splendid house that was rising, the fine furniture that had been ordered, the china and silver plate that would be delivered—none of it could possibly be for that old black woman! Would he keep her on as a servant? Impossible! Everyone in Botafogo knew they had been living together as man and wife!

  So far, neither Miranda nor Botelho had dared to broach the subject with their neighbor. They had confined themselves to discussing it with each other in hushed voices, trying to imagine how the tavern-keeper would resolve this ticklish dilemma.

  That damned old mammy! She was the sole flaw in a man who otherwise was so eminent and respectable.

  Nowadays, Bertoleza’s lover dined every Sunday at Miranda’s house. They went to the theater together. João Romão offered Zulmira his arm, and, courting not only her but the entire family, showered them with extravagant and costly gifts. If they stopped somewhere to have a drink he ordered three or four quart bottles right off the bat, always asking for three times what they needed and purchasing vast quantities of candy, flowers, and anything else that caught his eye. At the fund-raising auctions that formed part of village festivities, he was so eager to pile more gifts upon Miranda’s family that he never returned home without a man behind him loaded with tokens of his affection.

  Bertoleza saw what was occurring and puzzled over this transformation. He hardly made love to her anymore, and when he did, his disgust was so visible that it would have been better if he hadn’t. The poor woman often smelled foreign cocottes’ perfumes and wept in secret, without the courage to stand up for her rights. Accustomed to serving as a kind of draft animal, she no longer expected love and only hoped to be taken care of when she was too old and weak to work. She merely sighed as she went about her endless round of daily chores, craven and resigned like her parents, who had let her be born and grow up in captivity. She shrank from everyone—even from the rabble who were their customers and tenants—hating herself for being who she was, sad to be the black smudge on that glittering success story.

  And meanwhile, she went on worshipping her lover with all the irrational fervor of those Indian maids along the Amazon who willingly become the slaves of white men and who, though fiercely jealous, are capable of killing themselves to spare their idols from shame. What did it cost that man to let her snuggle up to him once in a while? Every master sometimes affectionately pats his dog . . . but not him! Bertoleza’s future appeared grimmer by the day; little by little, she ceased altogether to be his lover and became nothing more than his slave. As before, she was the first to rise and the last to go to bed, scaling fish in the morning that she sold in the evening, performing slightly lighter tasks when the sun was straight overhead, never taking a day off, without time to care for herself, ugly, worn-out, filthy, repulsive, her heart always bursting with sorrow she shared with no one. Finally, convinced that though she was not dead, she had no one to live for, she fell into a deep, listless depression, like a foul and stagnant pond. She became sharp-tongued, mistrustful, with knitted brows and a mouth that was a hard straight line. For entire days, without interrupting her chores, which she performed mechanically after so many years, she would gesticulate and move her lips in a wordless monologue. She seemed indifferent to everything, to everything around her.

  Nonetheless, one day when João Romão had a long conversation with Botelho, she had to abandon her work because her sobs would not let her continue.

  Botelho had told the tavern-keeper, “Ask him for her! It’s time!”

  “What?”

  “You can ask for the girl’s hand. Everything’s been arranged.”

  “The baron will say yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If I weren’t sure I wouldn’t talk this way!”

  “He promised you?”

  “I spoke with him and asked him in your name. I said you’d asked me to. Did I do something wrong?”

  “Wrong? You did me a big favor! So then everything’s settled?”

  “No. If Miranda hasn’t come to you, then you should talk it over with him, understand?”

  “Or write to him . . .”

  “That would be just as good.”

  “And the girl?”

  “She won’t be a problem. Is she still sending you flowers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then keep sending them too and doing everything else you said. Go on, Seu João; strike while the iron’s hot!”

  Jerônimo, for his part, returned to the São Diogo Quarry where he had worked before. He and Rita rented a house in Cidade Nova.

  It cost them a lot of money to settle in; they had to furnish their new home from scratch, since Jerônimo had taken nothing from São Romão but cash—cash he no longer knew how to spend wisely. Rita’s neatness and delicacy, however, made their place a delight. They had curtains around their bed and linen sheets, tablecloths, and napkins. They ate from china plates and washed with expensive soaps. Outside their door, they planted creeping vines that grew toward the roof, drawing bees to the scarlet flowers that opened every morning. They hung birdcages in the dining room; they stocked the pantry with all their favorite delicacies; they bought chickens and ducks and built an outhouse just for themselves, as the communal one disgusted the Bahian, who was very fussy about such matters.

  The first part of their honeymoon was sheer bliss. Neither of them did much work. Their life together was spent almost entirely on their six-foot-long bed, which had no chance to cool off. Never had the Portuguese found life so good, so free and easy. Those early days slipped by like the verses of some beguiling love song, barely interrupted by the refrain of their kisses in duet: a long, broad stream of pleasure, quaffed without pausing for breath, with his eyes shut and his face buried in the mulatto’s voluptuous, dark-brown neck, to which he clung like a drunkard who falls asleep clutching a bottomless demijohn of fine wine.

  He was utterly transformed. Rita extinguished his last memories of Portugal; the heat of her thick, dark lips dried his last nostalgic tear, which vanished from his heart with the last arpeggio on his guitar.

  His guitar! She replaced it with a Bahian violão and gave him a pipe and hammock. She bewitched his dreams with songs from the north, sad and sweet, full of Indian spirits smoking their pipes by roadsides on moonlit nights, asking travelers for rum and tobacco and transforming those who could or would not comply into wild beasts. She cooked him Bahian dishes, flavored with fiery palm oil the color of incandescent coals. She fed him muquecas so spicy they brought tears to his eyes, and she accustomed him to the sensual smell of her snakelike body, washed thrice daily and thrice scented with aromatic herbs.

  Jerônimo had passed the point of no return; he was a Brazilian. He grew lazy, fond of extravagance and excess, hot-blooded and jealous; his love of thrift and moderation vanished. He lost all interest in saving money and surrendered to the happiness of possessing his mulatta and being possessed by her alone.

  Firmo’s death cast no shadow upon their joy; both of them deemed it right and proper. The thug had killed so many people, he had done so much harm, that he deserved to die! It was only fair! If Jerônimo hadn’t done it, someone else would have! He’d asked for it, and he’d gotten it!

  At the same time, Piedade de Jesus, unresigned to her husband’s absence, we
pt over her misfortunes and also changed day by day, weighed down by despair, neglecting her appearance and her work, unable to drown her sorrows no matter how many tears she shed. At first she bravely struggled to accept her widowhood, more bitter than the other sort in which one is at least consoled by the thought that one’s beloved will never set eyes upon another woman or speak another word of love. But then she began to sink helplessly into the mire of her own unhappiness, without the energy to delude herself with false hopes, abandoning herself to her abandonment, letting go of her principles and her own character, feeling that she counted for nothing in this world and endured only because life was stubborn and would not release her from its grip and let her rot underground. She grew careless in her work, her customers started complaining and gradually fell away. She became sluggish and slovenly, and it was hard for her not to dip into the money Jerônimo had left her and that was meant to go to their daughter, who had been orphaned in her parents’ lifetimes.

  One day, Piedade awoke with a headache, a buzzing in her ears, and an upset stomach. Her neighbors advised her to drink a shot of rum. She took their advice and felt better. The next day she repeated the procedure. She found that the befuddlement thus induced alleviated her bad mood; she forgot her sorrows for a while. And sip by sip, she got used to downing half a bottle of spirits every day to lighten the burden of her troubles.

  Now that her husband was no longer around to forbid his daughter to set foot in São Romão, and now that Piedade needed company, the girl spent every Sunday with her mother. She was growing up strong and pretty, endowed with her father’s vigor and her mother’s good nature. She was nine years old.

  These were Piedade’s only moments of happiness: the ones she spent with her daughter. São Romão’s old inhabitants began to favor and love the girl as they had Pombinha, for they all felt a need to select and pamper some delicate and superior child whom they singled out for adulation. They soon had christened her “Senhorinha.”