Land of Black Clay

by Jose Louzeiro

  Jeruza came over and began to laugh.

  “I’ll return for her baptism. Jeruza’s going to be a pretty and intelligent girl.”

  “God willing!” said the mother.

  “How do you get by way out here?”

  “We live like cattle, wandering back and forth without knowing how or why. My wife here’s spent a month without knowing where I’d gone. All because all of a sudden the foreman decided I should cut cane on another one of the colonel’s plantations, one in Alagoa Grande. When the foreman decided I’d been punished enough, he let me return.”

  “Last time,” said Janaína, “me and the girl were stuck without anything to eat. I went to see the foreman about it, and he made a pass at me.”

  “Whose land is this?”

  “Almost all of it belongs to Colonel Barros,” said Luís.

  “And what do you do now?”

  “For the time being, I’ve been sent off. I complained about the work in Alagoa Grande, so the foreman won’t give me any work. He’s punishing me again.”

  “What’s worse,” added Janaína, “they want to evict us from our house and this little plot of land that once belonged to my father when Colonel Barros showed up. But I won’t leave. Luís has got it in his head: you don’t walk off what’s yours!”

  As I listened to the peasants, I contemplated the movements of my pursuers. Luís was talking about his problems as Janaína nodded affirmatively. I cast about for a way to clue them in to the situation I was in and my immediate need to get going.

  “What can I do to get out of here?”

  Luís glanced at his wife.

  “Her uncle has a bicycle. When I ask for it, he lends it to me.”

  “Where we are, is it far to the city?”

  Luís calculated, as Jeruza wandered over again. Janaína put another piece of couscous on a leaf that served as a plate.

  “If you go fast on a few downhills, you can do it in four hours.”

  “And the best time to go?”

  “Before dawn. Between three and four o’clock.”

  “Can I make a deal with you?”

  Luís thought about it. He was still a young man, with a serene face.

  “I’d like to borrow the bicycle. I don’t have any identification or anything, but I’ll leave my address. I’m in the house of Judge Odilon Fernandes, facing João Pessoa Square, near the Augusto dos Anjos library. When you arrive, I’ll give you back the bike and some money.”

  “Not necessary!” said Janaína. “I’m sure Luís will go right now and get the bike.”

  “Like she says, Mr. . . .”

  “Jorge.”

  “Like she says, Mr. Jorge,” said Luís, “what you did for us nobody could do, except God. You really saved our bacon!”

  “One other thing I’d like is a corner to catch some sleep.”

  “While Luís gets the bike, you can sleep in our bed,” said Janaína. “Make yourself at home. I’ll get some sweet cassava and some okra to make a good stew. When you wake up, lunch’ll be ready. Luís, see if your uncle has some meat he can give us.”

  Luís left and Janaína got a machete and a straw hat and went out with little Jeruza.

  I remained alone in the shack. Only a thin cloth curtain separated the small living room from the sleeping area. I closed the tiny window’s shutters, which consisted of boards from a crate, and lay down on the bed still dressed in the clothing they’d lent me. For an instant I looked up toward the ceiling, noting the tightly joined rafters, the thatch tied down with twine, and the trails left by termites. In the near-silence, I could hear wind whispering in a palm tree and the rustling of the mango trees’ branches. A mango fell with a thud, then another. I didn’t know how many mangoes had fallen for, exhausted, I fell into a sound sleep. I woke up to the sound of plates and silverware and the murmuring of Jeruza playing with a canvas doll. It was three o’clock in the afternoon but the couple hadn’t eaten; they were waiting for me to get up.

  “We didn’t want to wake you,” said Janaína.

  “The bicycle’s on the porch,” added Luís.

  I looked out the kitchen door and saw it: red, with chrome-plated rims. It had a pump and a small tool kit, too.

  “I’m afraid I’m putting you to a lot of trouble,” I said as I sat down at the table, putting on my plate a bit of the stew Janaína had made as if it were a special occasion. It had meat, sweet cassava and okra, and there was a soup thickened with flour and rice dyed with annatto.

  “This reminds me of my own mother’s cooking.”

  Janaína felt happy. She had combed her hair and thus made up showed her feminine side: a young and pretty woman. Luís opened a bottle containing a cane liquor drink, and put some ceramic cups on the table.

  “Can you find my address, or should I give you more directions?”

  Janaína smiled, showing white teeth. Luís’s teeth were already fairly crooked, and the ones in front were decayed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Luís is alive thanks to Judge Fernandes. Last year he got involved in the activities of the Sapé Union, and the foreman didn’t like it. Luís decided to pursue it anyway, and the foreman tried to have him done away with. When Judge Fernandes learned about it, he came to our defense.”

  “He didn’t try to have me killed,” said Luís. “He wanted to give me a scare. That’s the way they do it around here. If you belong to the union, they begin to bother you about it. First they try to make you believe that this business of a union won’t do any good, it’s a communist plot. If that doesn’t work they start to get serious.”

  “How so?”

  “Okay. Colonel Barros has a gang that does nothing but go after union people. In some cases, if the guy is the head of a family, they try to get at him that way.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They take the guy’s wife off to the gang’s barracks and do all sorts of lowlife things to her. After they’ve helped themselves, they send her back home.”

  “And then?”

  Luís remained silent but continued to seem relaxed. At most he was thirty, but he appeared older. His wife had to be around twenty-five if that old. When Luís had begun to talk about the gangsters’ practices, she didn’t seem to like it, appearing nervous.

  “Why remember these things, Luís? One day those vagabonds will end up paying for the evil they’ve done to others.”

  Jeruza went up to the bicycle. Luís warned her away from it and opened his arms. She ran toward him.

  “What about the land you occupy? How do you think that issue will be resolved?”

  Luís shrugged.

  “Our land runs from that stream over there,” said Janaína. “It belonged to my grandfather, who handed it down to my father. We’ve got the papers; everything was legalized at city hall.”

  “If they offered us a fair price, I think we’d do best to take it and get going. Far away,” Luís emphasized, his sadness registering on his somber face. “I know that Janaína doesn’t like to hear these things, but she knows we’ve got to think of the girl.”

  “Leaving our house to rent in Sapé is the same as fleeing,” declared Janaína with finality. “They’ll think we’ve got the blood of a cockroach.”

  “Isn’t the course Luís suggests the safest one, though?”

  “It is,” said Janaína as she washed Jeruza’s hands. “But it just so happens that I’ve got a score to settle with them. I’ve got to stay here until Colonel Barros’s empire collapses.” Her eyes grew red. She turned away, putting Jeruza on her neck and checking the sweet potatoes that were baking in the tiny clay oven, pieces of kindling snapping loudly and filling the shack with a pleasant odor. Luís seemed to feel a bit abashed. He scratched his head.

  “Want to try the bike? I might have to raise the saddle.”

  We went out on the landing. Blue smoke from the baking sweet potatoes wafted from the kitchen. Jeruza leaned out the little window, calling for her father. The bicyc
le was old but well-built, with new tires, a properly adjusted chain, and new brake shoes that gripped the wheels securely.

  “It’s up to a long journey,” I commented, doing doughnuts on the porch as Luís, kneeling, looked on. “No need to adjust the saddle. I’ll leave pretty soon.”

  “Don’t leave until I’ve fixed this snack,” said Janaína cheerfully. “We’ll have sweet potato and hominy.”

  I sat down under a jack tree. Jeruza came over to play nearby. She showed me her canvas doll and babbled things I couldn’t understand. Luís squashed a jigger with his big toe.

  “Jeruza, show your drawing to uncle.”

  Luís and Janaína’s land was well-planted with mango, jack, myrtle, and lemon trees, along with flowing acacias and a vegetable garden of lettuce, coriander, and tomatoes. Various birds sang; vem-vem birds flew beneath the guavas and pecked insects from the ground. All around lay a huge canefield, a sea of leaves moving in green waves that seemingly could surmount the barbed-wire fence at any moment and inundate all that lay inside: the well with its wooden pump-handle, the thatch-roofed shack, and Janaína’s clay oven, in which she made bread with rice or meal flour. Luís said that on Jeruza’s birthday, if he managed to scrounge one up, they would cook a turkey.

  “Janaína’s right to not want to leave here. And me, for my part, I should have done something about it. But I just let time slip by.”

  “What happened that was so serious?”

  Luís looked at me. His eyes were round, his face placid and sad. Jeruza returned with her little colored drawing in a plastic frame.

  “When Janaína and I got married, we spent one week at the house of a relative in João Pessoa, on Cruz das Armas Street. A big house. We had one bedroom, with all the comforts, even television. From there we returned to this cottage. From time to time she’d go visit her relatives while I continued to work in the canefields. On one occasion, she left to take some pastries to her aunt. Except she never made it there. She was waiting for the rural bus, and a van drove up, with some guys inside who offered her a lift. She said no, but one of them jumped out and forced her inside. They drove around a lot, eating the guava and canjica sweets she’d made. Then they made for the barracks where those thugs of Colonel Barros live. I’m not sure I know about every one of them that messed with her. One of them looked like an Indian, and another one had the nickname Galho Dentro; he’s famous for molesting women. Janaína had to stay with the Indian first, then Galho Dentro. When they got tired of her, another gangster showed up, the king of the goons: Vinte e Cinco. He does what he damn well pleases. He’s a type of vulture. His partners may have harmed Janaína, but he just about drove her insane. From what she herself told me, she thought of killing herself at certain points. For days, Vinte e Cinco kept her in his room with him, posting sentries so nobody would bother them. Besides helping himself to Janaína, he would beat her. He kept telling her over and over again he didn’t want to leave her looking good for any other man. A week later, they threw her against the door out here.”

  When Luís had finished his narrative, his eyes remained focused elsewhere; his face remained impassive. I felt awkward.

  “I’m sorry I insisted on asking you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes it’s good to let it out. I know now I’ve got to find Vinte e Cinco. I’m going to start with him.”

  “Why not just forget it? It’ll ruin your life!”

  Luís smiled bitterly, glancing at the bicycle that continued to occupy Jeruza’s attention, and at some pipira birds that were pecking at mangoes.

  “When I’m ready to go after Vinte e Cinco, it won’t be easy for them to find me. That’s why I want to get Janaína and the girl out of here. They’ve gotta get far away. I’m going to flay Vinte e Cinco like you’d shuck a cassava.”

  Luís’s face lit up at the thought of it; his eyes gleamed like a lunatic’s; his fists clenched.

  “Then, happen what may, my soul will be purified. My story will be told and retold. Whoever shows up on the land of black clay, he’ll soon hear the legend. It was like this, like that; it was Luís, they’ll tell him. A poor devil. Nobody would have thought he could do it, that soft moccasin. The other peasants’ll add details and maybe the other goons around here will learn to be careful what they do.”

  “How are you going to get Janaína out of here?”

  “If she can find some small job in Sapé or even in Santa Rita, I’m sure she’ll leave.”

  “Do you think I could help arrange it?”

  “If you can, for me it’d be the most important thing in the world. As you see, I have a hard time holding down a job. Whenever I get one I have to put my shame aside and put up with the jokes, the taunts. Some of my fellow workers don’t care where it hurts most. Others, to tell the truth, even treat me close to well. As though I’d been wronged.”

  We remained quiet for a moment. A pair of vem-vem birds flew from a guava branch to the ground and began to peck. I didn’t know what to tell Luís. The sincerity of his remarks made me uncomfortable.

  “Can you help me?”

  “I’ll talk to the judge. I’m sure that with his backing we can do something for Janaína.”

  Luís, seemingly contented, rubbed his hands. He got up and, in one agile swoop, picked up his daughter. Janaína called.

  “Let’s go, gang! Food’s ready. Hominy and sweet potatoes with honey.”

  I led Jeruza into the kitchen. The little girl was playing with shirt buttons that she must have known were her father’s. Jeruza and I laughed in unison. The smell of the hominy filled the room, and Janaína had covered the table with what I guessed was her best tablecloth. We sat down.

  After our snack, I returned to the bedroom, pulling the thin chintz curtain behind me as Janaína yelled at Jeruza for making noise. I stretched out on the bed, my head resting on a pillow made of grass. I looked at the same tightly joined rafters, thatch tied down with twine, and termite trails and mud tunnels I’d noticed before. How long would it take the termites to finish their work? I could hear the noise of Luís chopping wood, telling Jeruza to keep away. I wanted to close my eyes but couldn’t, my sleep disturbed by thoughts of how I could find Janaína a job, knowing that it would mean her husband’s death. Or would it? That would be another important segment in the story I’d file. Everything had gone against what we’d planned: Barbosa worrying, telling me to file pieces as soon as I arrived. We hadn’t counted on the element of surprise. I could never have imagined what my encounter with Janete had precipitated. But to tell the truth, I didn’t have much to complain about. I had wanted to get into the thick of things; well, there I was. My personal drama, next to the agony of Luís and Janaína, signified little. Behind his humble and simple mien, kind and welcoming, Luís hid various setbacks but, driven by bitterness, he would wind up creating more of a name for himself. He had left it to me to decide if I wished to help him. Would it be fair to push him toward death or would that step help him to recompose himself, winning back the confidence of his friends as he regained the ability to look them in the eye? Should I raise the subject with Judge Fernandes, or should I keep it a secret? Luís’s ax was coming down strongly on the wood. The blows repeated themselves monotonously, and I began to doze.

  “If you had another bike, ya know you could go with him.”

  “Yeah, I thought of it too. You think Genésio would lend me one?”

  “Doubt it. That guy’s as bad as the plague.”

  “What about his horse?”

  “You’re crazy, Janaína. You want Jorge to take all day to get to Sapé?

  “Come on. He doesn’t have to go that fast.”

  “And you? What about the kid?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, man! We’re safe. They’ve already done everything to me they wanted.”

  Luís didn’t like Janaína to talk that way. He felt all hot and bothered inside. He had continued to wonder about one thing in particular that he hadn’t dared to mention to anyone: wa
s Jeruza his daughter? He feared such thoughts. He went out on the verandah and sat down on a dry log. Sometimes he felt like hitting Janaína. Why did she talk that way? Did she like to wound him? He needed to resolve his doubts. If the boy who’d appeared so providentially in those parts managed to find a job for Janaína, would she win back her self-confidence, or was it too late? “Things done in friendship take a while.” He had gotten tired of hearing grandfather João say that; the old man lived isolated in a shack on the crest of a hill, planted with corn and potatoes. Down below he shared a greenhouse with his neighbors. They split everything evenly, under the principle that nobody had a right to a good harvest when a neighbor had been less fortunate. Maybe Janaína was right. A horse would be easier to borrow. He would speak with Master Tadeu, and he’d take care of it. He knew he’d always been careful. Maybe he could even fix them up with a cart, in which case the bicycle wouldn’t be needed. He could take Jorge and fifty kilograms of sweet cassava and sweet potatoes to sell in the Sapé market. Wasn’t Janaína right after all? he thought, beginning to cheer up. His wife drew near to hang up some placemats to dry; he squeezed her hand.

  “Come here, don’t be mad. I’ll ask Tadeu if I can borrow his cart. You think he’ll lend it?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? Mr. Tadeu’s almost like a relative.”

  As she spoke, Janaína hung the placemats on the barbed-wire fence.

  “I’ll talk with him about it. When Jorge wakes up, tell him I’ll be right back.”

  “And the bike?”

  “I’ll use it and take it back. I think that’s best; the boy’ll be safer. Who’s gonna worry about him, traveling alongside a washed-up peasant like me?”

  Janaína ran her hand through her husband’s hair.

  “You’re not washed up. We still have places we can hide. Anything we earn, we’ll be able to survive. Then there’ll just be the rent to worry about with what’s left over.”

  Luís squeezed his wife by the belt. For an instant the two remained quiet, until Jeruza wandered over, displaying a shirt that Jorge had been wearing.

  “Where did you find that shirt, little one?” asked her mother with a smile.