Land of Black Clay

by Jose Louzeiro

  Reopening his perfumed handkerchief, Chief Cordeiro smiled nervously.

  “Under what charge do we expel them?”

  Dr. Jansen also smiled, mirthlessly. After all, from a legal point of view the judge’s demand seemed ill-considered. How would one know whether a suspect still was a gangster or had been one but since quit? Judge Fernandes saw the weakness of his demand and tried to repair the damage.

  “Chief, on the day of the rally and on the Friday when trial begins, there’ll be no sale of alcoholic beverages in Sapé. The ban will remain in effect for forty-eight hours.”

  “There we go. I’ll post the prohibition announcement early tomorrow.”

  “You have my authorization.”

  The chief stood up, adjusted his gun in its belt, and shook the judge’s hand. It was the end of an interview that was at the same time curious and ridiculous. A car motor started in the street as the doctor closed the front door.

  “Will he do what he promised?”

  “What?”

  “Prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages.”

  “He might or might not. Up close, Juarez Cordeiro is a kind of backwoods gentleman. But let one colonel call him and everything changes. One thing I’m sure about, though; he’ll try to bring in Alcides the taxi driver, if only because there’s an old feud between them.”

  “That’s where you can begin your reporting, if I may say so,” Dr. Jansen said, continuing in his ironic vein.

  “What’s the angle?”

  “When Cordeiro arrests someone, the victim has a hard time staying alive.”

  “And to think I thought being a hometown judge would make my final days more relaxed. When I arrived, both the powerful and the humble turned out to greet me. Colonel Barros put on a barbecue. Some of the schools lined up their students and an orphan group sang the city song. It was the best day of my life. I came home somewhat dazzled. I told Lourdes that the reception seemed too much. She seemed to doubt me. Lourdes never could believe in the things that happened—and happen—around here. In truth, she was right. The powerful never do anything that they haven’t planned. By having a barbecue for me, Colonel Barros was hoping to neutralize or coopt me. Then the first case came up. It was a watershed. Do you remember, Jansen? A small case, apparently unimportant; it never even made it into the João Pessoa newspapers. That was when my relationship with what they call high society began to go bad. But that falling out is a badge of honor.”

  “What was the case about?” I asked.

  “A ten-year-old girl showed up dead on a canefield road on Nova Era Plantation. The girl’s parents got ahold of a Volkswagen Kombi and brought her body to the police station. As usual, Cordeiro had made himself scarce. Jansen showed up, nobody knows how or why . . . .”

  “I was trying to locate my maid’s brother at the station. There were rumors he’d been held there the evening before.”

  “As the child’s parents were simple people, not able to express themselves very well in front of those lowlifes,” the judge continued, “Jansen took a quick glance at the body and announced the girl had been raped and beaten. He demanded a written complaint be taken, but the clerk refused. Jansen called me and the trouble began. I ordered the complaint to be written up and for them to begin a proper investigation. Cordeiro showed up and praised my attitude, promising the case would not go unpunished. The next day what happened, Jansen?”

  “The old man we call Asbal around here was looking for me. He’s a wanderer, if you get my meaning. You know those people who’re lucid but don’t want to be part of the system? Asbal’s one of them. He carries a long staff and a canvas sack he wears with a strap over one shoulder and across the chest. His trips are interminable: he frequently walks from Sapé to João Pessoa and Campina Grande. Asbal showed up at my house as I was gardening. He stayed on his feet a long time, as if he were overseeing my work. I asked him where he’d come from, and he pointed south. He began to speak, slowly. He said dogs and vultures were mutilating the body of a child on the Café do Vento road, some two kilometers before the quarry.

  “ ‘Go there,’ ” Asbal told me. “ ‘Try to stop the little girl from being devoured.’ ”

  “I called the judge,” Dr. Jansen continued, “and we went together. I thought about calling the police, but Odilon was against it. I don’t know exactly what he had in mind—we’ve never talked about it directly. When we got there, we saw Asbal was right. It was the body of a girl, half-consumed. What horrified us even more was that it was the same girl who’d turned up dead on the canefield road at Nova Era Plantation, the one whose parents had taken her body to the police station. Odilon stood by with others who’d shown up while I went to get Chief Cordeiro. I didn’t tell him who she was exactly. I wanted to see his reaction. At first he didn’t seem affected; to the contrary, he joked that I was having a run of dead girls. At the scene, Cordeiro showed surprise. ‘But how?’ he asked. ‘The girl’s body went to the morgue.’ ”

  “How’d the story end?” I asked.

  “Given the cadaver’s state of decomposition, the chief authorized her burial by the side of the road, promising he’d get to the bottom of things. Odilon oversaw the beginning of the investigation for two weeks, but nothing came up. Then he decided to bring in a private detective from Recife, who stayed here for fifteen days. It was enough time for him to solve both mysteries. The girl had been raped by a hoodlum known as Vinte e Cinco, from the Alvorada Plantation, which belongs to Colonel Barros. The girl had died from great abuse. Taken by her parents to the police station—where I verified the rape—the body went to Sapé’s small morgue, but it doesn’t even have minimal security. She disappeared from there late that night.”

  “I reviewed Detective Ribeiro Soares’s research,” said Judge Fernandes, “and ordered some of Chief Cordeiro’s men to go to Alvorada Plantation and identify and arrest Vinte e Cinco. The next day all hell broke loose. Two of the three police assigned to get Vinte e Cinco were killed in an ambush; the other fled and hasn’t been heard from since. Cordeiro said there was nothing to be done, given Vinte e Cinco’s many friends. Moreover, he denied—as he does to this day—that Vinte e Cinco works for Colonel Barros. For that reason, one of those I intend to bring to justice in this city is Chief Cordeiro.”

  “What does he think about the possibility of being tried?”

  “He pays no attention. He’s one of the many beneficiaries of the legal immunity that reigns around here. I’ve set myself the goal of proving that a modern society will no longer tolerate that type of attitude, which leads to corruption, crime, and cynicism.”

  “I think I’ve got my lead,” I joked, trying to leaven the gloomy atmosphere. “Do you think I could interview the girl’s parents?”

  “I don’t know exactly which street they live on. But it’s in Mari, about eleven kilometers from Sapé. The priest celebrated mass for them; the women had a prayer vigil in the streets, carrying the child’s portrait.”

  “When you go to Mari you’d better have a gun on you,” Judge Fernandes recommended.

  “What good would it do? I don’t know how to shoot.”

  “Take his advice, son,” said the doctor. “Everyone around here’s armed—me too.” He pulled up his shirt and showed me a .22, tucked in a tooled leather holster.

  Chapter 6

  I roused myself in the hammock and looked at the gun the judge had lent me: an old Heckler nine-millimeter pistol, still considered very accurate from what I’d been told. The judge recounted its history. It was a present from a French colleague, Henry Françoise, a criminal-law specialist and judge in Lyon who collected World War II-vintage guns. The judge had been fascinated by the Heckler, so Françoise had given it to him. The judge described this particular model as elegant and comfortable to hold, but rather heavy.

  At that hour, the silence was profound. Hardly a sound came from the street, not even from João Pessoa Square. I could hear Jandira rummaging among the cupboards as she worked in the kitche
n.

  I was beginning to make progress, without undue effort, haste, or anxiety. I already knew a little bit about Sapé. By all rights it should be a happy, relaxed place, a luxury for someone like me, a specialist in snafus, misery, and other varieties of life’s complications. I had learned the meaning of cabrocó, and had everything I needed to locate the parents of the girl from Mari. The information I’d accumulated on Chief Cordeiro couldn’t be any better. I only needed the rally to begin to write my first story. At last I was about to get underway with my work. Only one doubt disturbed my peace of mind. Was Judge Fernandes certain of what he’d said? What if his accusations were unfounded? Impossible. How could a judge behave so offhandedly? And what about Dr. Jansen? An odd character who liked irony. What was his true relationship with the judge? And the judge’s wife Lourdes? Was she a relative of Dr. Jansen’s? If Judge Fernandes didn’t belong to any political party and didn’t want to be a candidate for any, what was his real interest in politics, given, as he knew, that things were getting more difficult every day? If the police chief himself wouldn’t protect him—any more than he did anyone else—how did he hope to remain safe? Was he a megalomaniac, one of that type often found in the judiciary, who ended up hobbled by a persecution complex and by heart trouble? No—it wasn’t that. To the contrary, he seemed calm and tolerant. He hadn’t displayed arrogance, even when he ordered the police chief to investigate the break-in at his house. He was modest enough to recognize mistakes, or so I’d felt during his conversation with his doctor. In the final analysis, who was Odilon Fernandes? I’d have to ask him more questions, bring out his personal, intimate side. Our first interview had been unimportant, superficial. I needed to see that man from another angle.

  Jandira knocked on the door. She brought a glass of cashew juice, coffee and biscuits, and some appetizing hominy. I thanked her; she smiled in the manner of one not used to such courtesies and left. That, doubtless, was my dinner. Yet I had no desire to eat. For the first time since arriving I planned to get out a little bit. What would night be like in that city of peasants, on the eve of a rally that was the talk of the town? I ate a bit of hominy, drank some of the drink, put some money in my pocket along with my press pass and identity card, and locked the doors. I walked quite a ways down Simplício Coelho Avenue, then headed toward Orsino Fernandes Avenue. Many houses were closed up, while others had lights on, the blare of a television revealing the occupants’ activity. Despite the heat, nobody was walking about. One street corner featured a cane-soup cart, two men, two women, and the harsh light of a gas lantern. I wanted to get some soup but decided against it and continued on. On João Suassuna Avenue I found a chic bar, with a sound system on one side, and on the other, some loudly decorated chairs, yellow and red flashing lights, a couple dancing, and women at tables nursing large bottles of beer. I sought out the darkest corner. A waiter came over, and I ordered whiskey on the rocks. As I waited—the waiter was taking his time—a strong-looking, heavy-set man approached. He gave the impression of being mentally retarded.

  “Did you order whiskey, sir?”

  “Yes, exactly. Jim Beam if you have it, or Johnny Walker.”

  The man’s expression changed, and the waiter busied himself cleaning the table. I knew I’d pulled it off. When someone orders imported whiskey in a small bar in a city like Sapé, the women immediately know he’s either a crook or a moneybags. The waiter returned smiling, putting a bottle of Jim Beam on the table. I took a swig as Nat King Cole played in the background, old Nat still a great success. Some young people came in, one of them a half-drunk loudmouth who shoved a table forcefully.

  I stayed in my corner like a rattlesnake set to strike. From time to time a 25-year-old woman eyed me. Once she smiled. I asked for a pack of John Player’s Special cigarettes, opened it and left it lying on the table. The trap was now set.

  The woman got out of her seat, circled behind the table of raucous teenagers, and went to the bathroom. She walked slowly upon returning, and asked for a cigarette.

  “I’m Janete. Can I sit down?”

  I pulled back a chair and asked her if she’d like a shot of whisky.

  “Hell yes! It’s been so long I’ve forgotten what that stuff is.”

  The waiter brought another glass. We toasted each other. People nearby stared.

  “Is today my lucky day?”

  “If you doubt it, I’m sure it’s mine.”

  We laughed. She wanted to know where I lived. I said I was staying with friends, just passing through. She drank another shot.

  “Too bad the best people are always just passing through this Podunk town.”

  “What type of people?”

  “Travelers sometimes show up; people working for the regional development authority; a few people selling truck parts. That’s the best we get hereabouts. Sapé is a sanctuary, populated by doting mothers and marriage-minded girls fawning over the Barros and Martinho sons. Around here there’s lots of Cinderellas, but the Prince Charmings come from two or three families.”

  Janete laughed and took another swig of whisky. She had a sad face but beautiful teeth and well-groomed hair—a woman fighting the tide of time, I thought.

  “And you, how do you get by?”

  “By keeping faith. There are times I think I must be made of iron or entirely unfeeling. What I’ve gone through here would be worth a book. What’s your name?”

  “Jorge Elias.”

  “It’s a long story, Jorge Elias. I had a friend in Recife named Elias. He helped me quite a bit when I wanted to be a singer. Then I went to João Pessoa. Never saw him again.”

  “And your artistic career?”

  “Long gone! In Sapé there aren’t any radio stations or newspapers—there ain’t nothing.”

  “What about Broadcast Radio, next to the Augusto dos Anjos library?”

  “It plays rock all day.”

  “Have any immediate plans?”

  Janete shook her head. Her sadness was weighing on her, the more so as she drank more whisky. I ordered hors d’œuvres. People eyed our table without any attempt at concealment. I asked the waiter to play Elba Ramalho. A minute later the American music quit and a baião, a popular northeastern folk song, struck up, lively and crystalline.

  “Elba in this dive? Whaddya know?” said Janete.

  “I ordered it for you.”

  She took my hand and drew up near me.

  “Wanna know my immediate plans? First, quit being a rent girl, then get out of Sapé.”

  “What’s a rent girl?”

  Janete looked crestfallen, almost began to cry. Elba Ramalho sang another song, animatedly.

  “It’s a woman who goes out with a guy, usually a lot older, and stays as long as he wants. Then he gets rid of her. Sometimes he doesn’t even show up to give her the boot, say goodbye, things of that type. He sends over a roughneck with the message. That’s a pretty dangerous moment.”

  “How so?”

  “The woman can wind up being the roughneck’s.”

  “Has this ever happened to you?”

  “Me, no. But I’m marked, as they say around here. So I try to take as many precautions as I can. I have to go around armed.”

  She patted her purse and laughed.

  “The worst of it is having to talk about these things, now, on one of my best nights.”

  “What if the thug finds you?”

  “Hard to say. They’re almost all employed by the Barros or Martinhos. They do what they feel like. Even Juarez Cordeiro knows better than to mess with them. That being the case, the victim has to defend herself.”

  “What if you plug him?”

  “Then I’ll be tried and locked up.”

  “And the district judge? There must be one at least?”

  “That we’ve got. Judge Fernandes”—Janete was slurring her words. “He’s the pride of Sapé.”

  She drank another shot and drew up her face.

  “Fortunately, there’s Judge Fernandes. He�
��s not afraid of the bigwigs. That’s why politicians in João Pessoa with ties to Sapé are trying to transfer him to Santa Rita or Guarabira.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s real simple. Judge Fernandes decided to set straight what’s always been wrong. He’s trying to throw in jail some of the peasant-killers who’re immune around here. Who would dare to arrest Vinte e Cinco, Galho Dentro, Mão de Vaca, or Bezouro? Just think! Things were just drifting along in a sea of tranquility, until Fernandes popped up. He’s my candidate for any office if he ever decides to seek it. But it may be that he doesn’t want to get involved in politics, and certainly not the gross type we’ve got around here. Fernandes shook up this county at his first trial, and caused more trouble at the second. Friday’s show is gonna cause a helluva lot of trouble. The murderers of João Pedro Teixeira, Pedro Fazendeiro, and Nêgo Fuba are going on trial. The original prosecutor managed to get sick on the eve of trial, and he’s replaced him. The mill owners are furious. Fernandes has already angered a lotta people. His own wife couldn’t take it. They say she went to Campina Grande but I don’t believe it. I bet she went a lot farther.”

  “Why would she?”

  “Simple: she’s a mother with three kids. One young daughter, two sons. They warned her one day that if Fernandes didn’t knock off the trials, they’d disappear. She tried to get her husband to see reason, but failed. She took the car and the kids and got lost.”

  “She abandoned the judge?”

  “More or less. Dona Lourdes is a Martinho. From the Macaíba Plantation, if I’m not mistaken. There, too, the judge wants the farmworkers to own the land they work. No self-respecting landowner wants that.”

  “And tomorrow’s rally?”

  “Father Juliano is leading it with his flock, most of them women. One day I wanted to give them a hand, but was afraid to. They’re a worthwhile outfit. Did you see how Presidente Vargas Avenue and Market Square are plastered with posters and banners?”

  The waiter brought more hors d’œuvres. A young man got up from his table, asked to borrow my lighter, and made a show of throwing it back at me. I ignored the provocation, staying calm.