Now the two cocottes, inseparable friends and terrible in the unreachable solidarity that made them like a two-headed cobra, lorded it over Rio de Janeiro high and low. They were seen wherever there was fun to be had; in the afternoon before supper, they drove through Catete in an open carriage, with Juju between them. At night they could be seen in theater boxes, where they attracted the stares of jaded politicians avid for new sensations, and of corpulent coffee planters who had come to Rio to squander the money their slaves had made for them at harvest time. An entire generation of lechers had passed through the two women’s hands. Within three months, Pombinha had become as skilled as Léonie at their trade; her ill-fated intelligence, born and bred in São Romão’s humble muck, throve amid the richer slime of more spectacular vices. She worked wonders, seeming to intuit all the secrets of her profession. Her lips touched no one without drawing blood; she knew how to suck, drop by drop, from the stingiest miser, every penny that could be extracted from her prey. Meanwhile, along São Romão Avenue, she was, like her instructress, adored by her old and loyal neighbors. Whenever the two women showed up with Juju, Augusta’s doorway filled with people who blessed them with the idiotic smiles of their resigned and hereditary poverty. Pombinha’s purse was always open—especially to Jerônimo’s wife, whose daughter evoked a special sympathy, identical to what she herself had inspired in Léonie. The chain continued and would continue forever; São Romão was fashioning another prostitute in that forsaken girl, who was growing into womanhood beside an unhappy drunken mother.
It was only because of Pombinha’s charity that there was food on Piedade’s table, since no one would entrust clothes to her or give her any other work.
Poor woman! She had finally hit bottom. She no longer caused pity but disgust and irritation. Her last vestiges of self-respect had been stamped out; she went about in rags, indifferent to her appearance and always drunk, with a gloomy, morbid drunkenness that never dissipated. Her house was the filthiest in São Romão. Unscrupulous men abused her, often several at a time, taking advantage of her stupor. Nowadays, the smallest sip of rum put her in the mood; she awoke every morning feeling dazed and depressed, without the strength to live another day, but her first nip brought back her uncontrollable laughter. One of João Romão’s employees who lately had run São Romão for his boss had given her three eviction notices. All three times, she had asked for a few days to find somewhere else to live. Finally, the day after Pombinha had visited her with Léonie and given her some money, they piled her few sticks of worthless furniture in the street.
Indifferently, Piedade and her daughter set out for Cat Head, which as São Romão put on airs, grew more squalid, more sordid, more abject and shimmy, thriving on the scum and garbage the other place rejected, as though its goal were to preserve forever, in a pure state, a classic example of one of Rio de Janeiro’s hellholes: a place where every night brings a samba party and a brawl, where men are murdered and the police never find out who did it, a breeding ground for lustful larvae where brothers and sisters sleep together in the same slime, a paradise for vermin, a swamp of hot, steaming mud where life sprouts savagely, as from a garbage dump.
XXIII
Outside the door to a pastry shop and café on Rua do Ouvidor, João Romão, looking very dapper in a new pale worsted suit, waited for Miranda’s family to finish shopping.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the street was bustling. The weather was cool and pleasant. People sauntered in and out of Casa Pascoal. Dandies stood around, savoring their cigars and waiting to be seated at one of the black marble-topped tables; groups of ladies dressed in silk sipped glasses of port and nibbled pastries. There was a delightful smell of perfumes and aromatic vinegar; the atmosphere was lively but well-bred. The customers flirted discreetly, exchanging glances in the mirrors that lined the walls. Men drank at the bar, while others chatted, munching meat pastries near the heaters. Some people were already buried in the afternoon newspapers. Clerks busily sold cookies and candy, tying colored packages with ribbons that the customers could suspend from their fingers. At the far end of the room, large orders prepared for banquets that evening emerged from a doorway: towers and castles of hard candies, fancifully decorated cakes. Some employees took enormous shiny trays from carts, while others placed each masterpiece in its box, which still others then insulated with fine tissue paper. Government workers dropped in for a vermouth and soda. Reporters slipped in among groups of their colleagues and of politicians, their hats pushed back, eager for news, their eyes bright with curiosity. João Romão remained by the door, leaning on his ivory-handled umbrella, greeted by those who strolled by. People smiled and offered him business propositions, while he occasionally glanced at his watch.
Finally Miranda’s family appeared. Zulmira led the way, looking very elegant in a tight-fitting cream-colored dress, a perfect specimen of the pale, high-strung, vivacious Carioca. Then came Dona Estela, serious, clad in black, with the firm step and severe air of a woman proud of her virtue and devotion to duty. Miranda brought up the rear, sporting a frock coat, a decoration on his lapel, a high collar that reached his chin, polished boots, a top hat and a carefully trimmed mustache. When he and Zulmira spotted João Romão, they smiled at their friend. Only Dona Estela preserved unaltered her icy mask of a woman who, deep down, cares only for herself.
The ex-tavern-keeper and future viscount hastened toward them, solicitously doffing his hat and inviting them to take some refreshment.
They all entered together and sat down at the first empty table. A waiter quickly appeared and João Romão, after consulting Dona Estela, ordered sandwiches, pastries, and muscatel from Setúbal. Zulmira asked for sherbet and a cordial. She was the only one who spoke; the others were still casting about for a subject of conversation. Finally Miranda, who had been contemplating the newly redecorated walls and ceiling, offered a few reflections on their appearance. Dona Estela maliciously asked João some questions about the opera company, throwing him into such a state of confusion that he blushed and lost his poise. Fortunately, at that very moment Botelho arrived with a piece of news: a sergeant had been killed at an army barrack. The sergeant, insulted by an officer in his battalion, had raised his hand against him, and the officer had unsheathed his sword and run him through. Well done! Botelho was a stickler for military discipline.
His eyes flashed, as they always did when he held forth about anything that smelt of uniforms. Analogous anecdotes were dredged up: Miranda recalled an identical case that had occurred twenty years earlier, and Botelho recited an interminable list of similar incidents.
When they rose from the table, João offered his arm to Zulmira, the baron did likewise with his wife, and they all set out for Largo de São Francisco, ambling along at a leisurely pace, accompanied by Botelho. Upon their arrival, Miranda asked his neighbor to accept a ride in his carriage, but João excused himself, saying he still had business downtown. Botelho also stayed behind, and as soon as the carriage had driven off, he whispered in João’s ear: “He’s coming today! Everything’s been arranged!”
“Really?” João eagerly asked, stopping short in the middle of the square. “Thank God. It’s about time!”
“About time? Listen, my friend: I had to sweat over this! It was a regular campaign!”
“I know, I know; we’ve discussed it before!”
“It’s not my fault he was so hard to track down. . . . He was away on a trip! I wrote to him several times—you know that—but I only got hold of him today. I was at the police station twice, and I went back this morning. Everything’s set! But you have to be there to hand the nigger over . . .”
“I wish I could get out of that part . . . I’d rather not be around . . .”
“Of course, but then who are they going to deal with? . . . No, you’ll have to bite the bullet. You’ve got to be there!”
“You could go instead . . .”
“That wouldn’t help! Any little problem could ruin the whole p
lan! It’s better to do it right! What difference does it make to you? . . . They’ll demand their slave, who belongs to them by law, you’ll hand her over, and that’s that! You’ll be rid of her forever, and in a few days the champagne corks will be popping at your wedding!”
“But . . .”
“She’ll snivel and get upset, but you’ll just have to act tough and let her take what’s coming—what the hell! It wasn’t you who made her black!”
“Let’s go then! It must be about time.”
“What time is it?”
“Three-twenty.”
“All right.”
They went back down Rua do Ouvidor till they reached the Gonçalves Dias trolley stop.
“The São Clemente trolley won’t be along for a while,” the old man observed. “I’m going to have a glass of water.”
They entered a nearby bar and, in order to sit down, ordered two cognacs.
“Listen,” Botelho added, “you don’t have to say a word. Act as if it’s none of your business, you understand?”
“What if he wants to be paid for all the time she was with me?”
“Hey, you didn’t hire her from anyone! You didn’t know she was a slave; you thought she was free. Now her owner shows up, demands her back, and you hand her over, since you don’t want something that doesn’t belong to you! She may ask you for her wages, and then you should pay her . . .”
“How much should I give her?”
“Around five hundred mil-réis, if you want to do it right.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do.”
“And then it’ll be over! As soon as they leave, Miranda’ll drop by. You’ll see!”
They had more to say, but the São Clemente trolley arrived and was mobbed by the crowd that had been waiting for it. The two men couldn’t find seats together, so they were unable to talk during the journey.
As they crossed Largo da Carioca, a victoria passed them at a trot. Botelho turned around, caught João’s eye and smirked. Pombinha was in the carriage, bedecked with jewels, beside Henrique. Both of them looked very gay. The student, who was in his fourth year of medical school, lived a merry life, sharing quarters with other lads of his age and spending his father’s money freely.
When the two men reached Botafogo, João invited his friend to come in and led him to his office.
“Rest for a while . . .” he said.
“If I knew for sure they were going to come soon, I’d stay and help you out.”
“Maybe they won’t come till after lunch,” the other replied, sitting down at his desk.
A clerk respectfully approached and asked him a few questions about the store, to which João replied in businesslike monosyllables. Then he asked some questions himself and, since everything was running smoothly, he took Botelho’s arm and led him from the room.
“Stay for dinner. It’s four-thirty,” he said on the stairs.
The kitchen staff needed no special instructions, since the old parasite ate frequently at his neighbor’s house.
The meal was rather strained; both of them felt oppressed by a vague sense of foreboding. João barely managed to get his soup down and then asked for dessert.
They were having coffee when a servant entered and announced that there were two policemen downstairs with a gentleman who wished to speak to the master of the house.
“I’ll see them now,” João replied. Turning to Botelho, he added; “It’s them!”
“It must be,” the old man agreed.
And they hurried downstairs.
“Who wants to see me?” João exclaimed with feigned surprise as he entered the store.
A tall man with a jaded air approached and handed him a piece of paper.
Trembling slightly, João unfolded it and read it slowly. Silence fell; the clerks stopped working, uneasily watching the scene as it unfolded before them.
“You’ve come to the right place; she’s here,” the businessman finally said. “I thought she was free.”
“She’s my slave,” the other declared. “Please hand her over.”
“Of course, immediately.”
“Where is she?”
“She must be inside. Come this way, please.”
The gentleman nodded to the two policemen, and they all set out together. Botelho led the way, while João followed behind. He was pale, and his hands were clasped behind his back.
They crossed the storeroom, went down a little corridor, passed through a paved courtyard and finally reached the kitchen. Bertoleza, who had taken the clerks their lunch, was squatting on the floor, cleaning fish for João’s supper, when she saw the sinister group stop in front of her.
She recognized her former master’s eldest son, and a shudder ran through her. In one horrible flash, she grasped the entire situation: She understood, with the lucidity granted the condemned, that she had been tricked, that the piece of paper João had shown her had been a fake, and that her lover, lacking the courage to kill her, was returning her to slavery.
Her first impulse was to flee. But as she glanced about, seeking some escape, the gentleman stepped in front of her and gripped her shoulder.
“This is her!” he told the policemen, who, with a gesture, ordered the woman to follow them. “Seize her! She’s my slave!”
The black woman, motionless, surrounded by fish scales and guts, with one hand on the floor and the other gripping her kitchen knife, stared at them in terror.
The police, seeing that she wouldn’t move, unsheathed their sabers. Bertoleza leapt back as swiftly as a startled tapir and before anyone could stop her, ripped open her belly with one swift slash.
She fell forward, groaning in a pool of her own blood.
Covering his face with his hands, João shrank back into the storeroom’s darkest corner.
At that same moment, a carriage pulled up outside. It was a committee of abolitionists in dress suits, who had come to respectfully deliver a certificate declaring him an honored member and patron.
He told his servants to show them into the drawing room.
Afterword
Written in 1890, Aluísio Azevedo’s The Slum (O cortiço) is a literary phenomenon that can still be found today on Brazil’s best-seller lists. The characters, which the author set in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the nineteenth century, have definitively entered the Brazilian collective imagination and have become keys for the interpretation of that society. This work has now gone far beyond its literary limits to be adapted for cinema, theatre, soap operas, and comic books. At the same time, its editions in Brazil and abroad are numerous. What is the fascination of this novel in which eroticism and social struggles have such power? What makes it permanent in the eyes of today’s readers, what allows it to go beyond classification as a realist or naturalist novel?
And who is this Aluísio Azevedo, who was born in São Luís do Maranhão in 1857, moved to the capital (Rio de Janeiro) at age nineteen to study plastic arts, but ended up leaving his mark as the famed author of dozens of novels and plays? As a matter of fact, Azevedo’s biography arouses some perplexity among scholars, because, although he lived exclusively from his writing for sixteen years and led an intense literary life, he then practically abandoned literature altogether upon entering the diplomatic service. From then on he lived in Spain, Japan, Great Britain, and several South American countries, including Argentina, where he died in 1913, but the distance from his homeland and the fact that he wasn’t obliged to write to support himself silenced one of the most brilliant literary talents of his time. Aluísio Azevedo was the brother of Artur Azevedo, the most notable and popular theatre actor in the country at the turn of the century. Upon moving to Rio, Aluísio got his start as a newspaper illustrator and caricaturist but soon thereafter he was writing serial novels. His production includes romantic as well as realist and naturalist works. Some of the latter took on a polemic tone, as in the case of O mulato (The Mulatto) (1881), which deals with anticlerical and racial themes, and Casa de pensão
(Boarding House) (1883), a roman à clef based on amorous and criminal events of the time.
1. A Portrait of Brazil
When he published The Slum, Aluísio Azevedo had a more ambitious plan: to write five novels that would serve as broad panoramas of Brazilian society from 1820 on. He was following the example set by Balzac, for example, who described the French society of his time in the Human Comedy, and by Emile Zola with Les Rougon Macquart. The novels planned by Azevedo were to have the following titles: The Slum, A família brasileira (The Brazilian family), O felizardo (The lucky fellow), A loureira (The seductress), and A bola preta (The black ball). Only the first book of the series was published, however.
As Alcides Maia stated on the occasion of Azevedo’s induction into the Brazilian Academy of Letters (1897), he “intended to depict five different periods during which Brazil is transformed and arrives either at a complete political and social collapse, or a complete regeneration of social customs, imposed by the [Republican] revolution [of 1889].” Indeed, the time at which The Slum was published was critical. Besides the emancipation of slaves in 1888, the next year the country witnessed the fall of the Empire which had been founded in 1822 and of the dynasty inherited from Portugal. The military, headed by Marshal Deodoro, proclaimed the Republic, and Emperor Pedro II—a well-known humanist and a friend of Pasteur, Wagner, Gobineau, and Agassiz—was exiled to France, where he would die in 1891, after having ruled for nearly half a century.
The Slum (Library of Latin America) Page 25