Land of Black Clay

by Jose Louzeiro

  “How is the judge?”

  “He’ll get better only after we get that bullet out of his shoulder.”

  “When are you going to do that?”

  “Tonight, as soon as the internal bleeding stops.”

  “Why not perform an operation that would include stopping the hemorrhage?”

  “Everything’s risky around here, my dear journalist. Besides, the judge would have to stay in the hospital and that would be the same as throwing him to the wolves. Given all that, I’m taking one step at a time.”

  “What about Vinte e Cinco?”

  “According to Chief Cordeiro, ‘the entire police force of Sapé’ is on the lookout for him. But as we all know, it’s a lie. Vinte e Cinco is around here celebrating.”

  “What about the boss of the goon squad?”

  “Cordeiro himself says that he had nothing to do with it because he was in Pernambuco at a meeting of sugarcane growers. We know that’s a lie as well, but he’s got a perfect alibi.”

  “How can we put an end to all this, Dr. Jansen?”

  “I’m neither a pessimist nor a wild-eyed fool. But Odilon will be able to return to the bench.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Sapé is a region of exploited people. Even the humblest peasant, who cannot verbalize what he thinks, feels the exploitation in his flesh. If the judge is able to topple Colonel Barros, or even bring him down to size, the whole peasantry will support him. It’ll become more difficult for the extreme right to continue running its Syndicate of Death and more difficult yet for the people who belong to the so-called Lowland Group to strut around here, proud of what they do.”

  “I think I’ll file my first story today.”

  “If I may ask, where have you been?”

  “It’s a somewhat melodramatic tale—I’m a bit embarrassed about it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went to the Covil Bar, and met a woman named Janete there. In her house I have to admit I took a chance . . . .”

  “She offered you a vodka cocktail laced with trichloromethane and jasmine tea to disguise it,” the doctor said.

  “What in the heck is that?”

  “Chloroform. It’s not the first time she’s done it. Whenever there’s somebody special in town, she goes after him. And you could have wound up dead as a result of an ‘ambush.’ Isn’t that the kind of thing that goes on in Rio?”

  I couldn’t help but be amused by the way Dr. Jansen was talking.

  “What do you know about Janete?”

  “She’s suspected of being involved in other incidents. Some say Cordeiro protects her. People talk a lot. But there’s something about that Janete that I haven’t figured out. Nobody really knows her. In fact, few have ever even seen her.”

  “And I thought I was pretty streetwise when it comes to crime. Impressive how she faked it. That’s when I blew it,” I added. “She didn’t invite me to her house; I was the one who insisted on it. For a moment I let my guard down. I almost bought the farm. I was just lucky enough to wind up in the back of a van, completely naked and tied up. When I woke up, I heard the voices of some guys I couldn’t see. They were talking and laughing, half-drunk; I managed to untie the ropes and disappear.”

  “Would you recognize Janete if you saw her again?”

  “I think so.”

  “When the judge gets better, he’s going to enjoy hearing your story.”

  Chapter 10

  Around seven o’clock in the morning, the windows and door of Janete’s house were ajar, the lights burning. A luminous transparency of sun and light enveloped the grass-lined gravel street, a dry rain that Heleninha cut off with her small box of hard candies. She put the case atop the low tile-decorated wall.

  “Dona Janete?”

  She called again, then stretched to see inside. Overturned chairs lay in the middle of the room. She ran in and found clothes and shoes strewn on the floor and Janete stretched out on the bed, blood-spattered and bruised on her arms and face.

  “Help! Dona Janete’s dead!”

  The first to respond was Josefa, followed by Matilde. Neighbors’ doors began to open. Some mechanics who were fixing an old truck at an auto-body shop ran over. Guga, one of the mechanics, wiped his hands on a rag.

  “She’s alive!”

  The neighbors ventured in. Matilde gave herself the task of covering Janete with the bed sheets lying on the floor.

  “I wonder what could have happened.”

  Josefa found some cotton gauze in the medicine cabinet and put a match to it. She approached Janete with the smoldering gauze in a trembling hand as Guga held the victim’s head. More neighbors were peering from various corners of the house into which they had squeezed themselves.

  “Someone tried to kill her.”

  “How could it be?”

  “I didn’t hear anything unusual.”

  Janete shuddered as she reacted to the smoking cotton.

  “Wet down her forehead!”

  The neighbors’ chatter grew louder. Fat Maria Estela, red-eyed, lit a candle in front of the icon of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.

  Matilde reappeared with a towel soaked in cold water she’d found in the refrigerator.

  “Joca!” yelled Guga. “Let’s get Dona Janete to the hospital!”

  Another neighbor got Janete’s nightgown out of her wardrobe; Josefa and Matilde dressed her. Guga gave his coworker a car key and, as the women were dressing Janete, walked around the house, seeing for the first time an ashtray filled with cigarette butts, dirty dishes in the sink, a blue men’s jacket, bottles of beer and cognac, broken glasses, and a record-player still turning. He turned out the lights.

  The women finished dressing Janete, and Matilde gave her a finishing touch, straightening her hair with a brush.

  Joca reappeared in his dirty blue mechanic’s jumpsuit. He took Janete’s shoulders while Guga took her legs. They carried her as carefully as they could to the back seat of an old rusted-out Opala.

  “Dona Matilde or Dona Josefa should come with us.”

  Matilde got in the front seat; she and Guga drove past neighbors who continued to hover in the middle of the street. Josefa and Heleninha returned to Janete’s house. A third woman, Mundica, came over to help them. Heleninha swept up while Mundica straightened the house. Josefa, traumatized by the event, sat and worried. She didn’t understand how that girl had wound up on their dead-end street anyway. Janete was nice to the neighbors, especially Josefa. She gave her clothes and shoes, and had never forgotten to give her a Christmas present. But for months she would be away, traveling to distant cities that Josefa knew only through television. When she returned, she would bring souvenirs. On Sundays, strange men would show up, and Josefa would offer to serve them lunch.

  At first almost all the neighbors spoke poorly of Janete. They regarded her as a prostitute who had come from the big city to swindle various country bumpkins. Later, in the face of her work in the community, these prejudices began to be forgotten. When old Tadeu needed help for an emergency operation, it was Janete who helped him, selling an expensive ring for the needed money. The neighbors had never forgotten how Tadeu returned from Recife, recovered and healthy in weight and color.

  At a time when the neighborhood activists were pressing for running water, it was Janete who had eventually broken the impasse. How often she had importuned the city councilors and even the mayor without success—one wasted visit after another, days and days spent in luxurious waiting rooms with carpeted floors and chandeliers. Usually she would be received by advisers and aides who had no power to decide anything. Why, they would ask, should the city install running water in the Covão neighborhood, when Boqueirão, Riacho and Ponte Nova, with their much greater population, were still awaiting the same benefit? Janete rose to the challenge. She made several visits to city hall and another to the state water department. The trucks and ditch diggers appeared, and in less than a year people could turn a tap and get water.
The community felt elated. How had she done it? Nobody knew, but a few made snide remarks:

  “With that body and that smile, what wouldn’t she be able to accomplish?”

  The elders didn’t like such jokes, even though Janete’s lifestyle hadn’t changed. She went to her meetings and spent days absent from Covão, but people celebrated when she returned. If someone backstabbed her, recriminations would quickly follow.

  “Let them say what they will. For my part, I’m grateful to her,” old Tadeu would say. “Had it not been for the help she gave me, and which I’ll never be able to repay, I’d have been six feet under a long time ago.”

  “Yes, but what makes me wonder is her ties to Colonel Barros’s men,” Elói the shopkeeper would reply. He was the owner of a general store that sold everything from money to rags. “Leaving that aside, she seems to me to be a good sort. She buys from me and doesn’t ask for credit. But every so often I see one of the colonel’s men heading her way.”

  “What of it, Mr. Elói? Doesn’t all this around here belong to the colonel anyway? Covão, Boqueirão and Ponte Nova, they’re all his. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  The Opala’s doors hung open outside the small hospital’s emergency entrance. Guga and Joca carried Janete inside, and Matilde ran ahead to alert the doctor on call. Within minutes they had surrounded a white-painted iron table, a young doctor examining bruises and bite wounds.

  “She took quite a few blows.”

  A nurse took Janete’s blood pressure. “Poor thing!” She wheeled the table into a windowed room as the neighbors waited outside. The doctor pulled back her nightgown.

  “Look at that, will you! Raped!”

  “Shouldn’t we notify the police?”

  “After she wakes up. Then we’ll decide what to do and say. Remember what happened last week?”

  The nurse cleaned Janete’s face, arms and chest with peroxide-soaked gauze. She lay there unconscious that day as she would the next, as if dead.

  On the third day appeared a heavy, large man dressed in rough dark clothing. He stopped outside the hospital. People spoke to him, but he did not respond. Gossip about Janete had taken hold of the whole city, dominating the conversation in Arlindo’s bakery and Aniceto’s barber shop.

  “The mystery man disappeared,” the nurse said.

  But early the next day there he was again. Toward late afternoon the doctor decided to approach him.

  “What do you want? What’s your name?”

  “Azulão. I want to see the girl!”

  “She’s unconscious.”

  “I want to see her anyway.”

  Irritated by such obduracy, the doctor stared.

  “Are you a relative?”

  “In a way.”

  “Give me your gun and you can come in.”

  Azulão raised his arms.

  “I’ve never been the type to arm myself, doctor.”

  The doctor opened the door to Janete’s room. Inside the nurse was adjusting her intravenous drip. Azulão took off his hat.

  “They beat her severely,” said the doctor.

  “Who was it, Janete?”

  The nurse gripped one rail of the bed as she leaned over to remove a thermometer from Janete’s underarm. Azulão repeated his question, closer this time. His firm voice had taken on a softer tone.

  “Who was it?”

  Her eyelids fluttered, surprising nurse and doctor alike. What was between the two of them? they wondered. Azulão lowered his head further; Janete struggled and tried to speak, but all she could manage was a soft whisper. The giant man, inscrutable, listened, smoothing out her hair and contemplating her as if he was saying goodbye.

  “She mustn’t get excited,” the doctor reminded Azulão.

  The nurse dried tears as they ran down Janete’s face.

  “What was it she said?” the nurse asked.

  “She asked me to stay nearby.”

  Azulão drew back from the bed. He put on his hat, adjusted the leather strap below his jaw, and left.

  “Who was it?” asked the nurse.

  “Dunno. Sure is a strange thing, that’s for sure,” said the doctor. “I’ll have to tell Chief Cordeiro soon. I’m going out; I’ll be back before six.”

  The woman began to tremble. The nurse touched her head, noticed yet another wound, and began to apply an antiseptic to it.

  “Don’t leave me! I don’t want to be left alone!”

  Chapter 11

  I spent that entire day of heat and silence reworking and refining my story. I decided on a chronological format, but led with a report on Judge Fernandes’s shooting. I described the visits he had received the evening before from important regional political figures: a representative of the Governor of Paraíba state, Professor Zoroastro Suassuna; the state secretary for security, former assemblyman Tibúrcio Jório; and Father Juliano. I had taken photos with my Olympus-Pen camera; the film sat on one side of the table.

  After describing the assailant as a gangster in Colonel Barros’s employ who went by the nickname Vinte e Cinco, I emphasized that Chief Cordeiro had not been able to catch him.

  Quoting Father Juliano, I also stressed that the plot to kill the judge was part and parcel of violent acts that had been committed against the Sapé Rural Workers’ Union and the Church of Santa Terezinha, in the Sapé neighborhood of Nova Brasília.

  I reread the material, added a few words, and wrote copy for the photo captions on a separate piece of paper. According to my calculations, today’s filing would yield a minimum of two pages if the layout artist made full use of four or five photographs, some of which when developed should show the judge hovering dramatically between life and death.

  The few print and television reporters sent to Sapé to cover the attempted murder arrived rather late. They made do with quotes or sound bites by Father Juliano, Sólon de Almeida and Margarida Maria Alves. Recife television aired a short interview with Colonel Barros, in which he declared that Vinte e Cinco had not been his employee for a long time, a statement confirmed by other members of the Lowland Group present in the colonel’s office during the interview.

  “The judge chose radicalism,” said Colonel Barros, “and radicals always end up doing harm to themselves. I hope he recovers and lives a long life. I am not his enemy and I hope, as would any responsible citizen, that the perpetrator is punished.”

  I made sure to include Colonel Barros’s rare public comment in the story. I showed it to the judge and Dr. Jansen, both of whom found it amusing.

  “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” commented Judge Fernandes.

  “What a cynic!” agreed Dr. Jansen.

  The next day, I accepted a ride from the doctor, who was going to Campina Grande. It would be safer to mail the story to Rio from there. I gathered up the material, put it in my backpack and, while waiting for Dr. Jansen to show up, sat before the judge, who had fallen asleep. After the bullet had been removed from his shoulder, his recovery had accelerated. I noticed a book on the bedside table: Orris Soares’s Complete Theatrical Works. I opened to a page at random:

  “GALDINO: ‘Love, after the object of its affection has died, remains in humans for reasons of nostalgia or hate.’ ”

  Dr. Jansen was pulling up; the noise woke up the judge.

  “See you later, Odilon.”

  “If they ask about me in Campina Grande, tell them I’m still working—ready, willing, and able.”

  We both laughed, and later mentioned the judge’s resilience in the car. Dr. Jansen had known the man since both were students in the elite private high school in João Pessoa.

  “He doesn’t let anything get him down,” the doctor ruminated. “The worst blow he ever gave a hint of suffering was the day that Lourdes took the kids to her parents’ house.”

  “Separation?”

  “Exactly. You might as well know the whole story. Lourdes is a plantation owner’s daughter. In the middle of the fight Odilon decided to wage, she took her stance.
And it’s understandable she’d take her father’s side.”

  “Who is her father?”

  “Evilásio Martinho. Brother of Júlio, Wenceslau and João Alberto Martinho. Each of them is more powerful than Colonel Barros.”

  “Then why is Colonel Barros so notorious?”

  “Well, he’s the Lowland Group’s point man. He’s the leader, the one who doesn’t care if he’s stigmatized by public opinion. He’s a man of the right; he collaborated and still collaborates with the current military regime. He’s proud of it. His partners are more prudent. They don’t like to show off their power.”

  “How’s Judge Fernandes’s situation?”

  “As soon as he gets better, he’ll deal with the divorce. Lourdes isn’t coming back and the children are grown, which simplifies the problem.”

  “What’s your feeling about all this?”

  “It isn’t easy. Lourdes is a friend. She’s not a bad person, really; just apolitical. So it follows naturally that she doesn’t accept her husband’s inclination to encourage a spirit of community involvement in the countryside. As for unions, she doesn’t even like to hear the word spoken.”

  “What does she think of the workers who drift around the plantations, without any hope in life?”

  “She doesn’t. For her, as for the small middle class here in Sapé, the peasant was born into this world to fulfill a destiny of poverty.”

  Around three o’clock, we arrived in downtown Campina Grande. I said goodbye to Dr. Jansen and went to the post office to send my story via overnight mail. Next I found a long-distance phone booth and made various calls.

  “Connect me with the editorial department. Barbosa.”

  I waited a minute, worried that the line would go dead. Barbosa picked up; I felt a certain happiness in hearing him.

  “It’s Jorge Elias!”

  “Jorge Elias? What’s happening up there, pal?”