Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  Twenty minutes later, the steer was on its feet, grazing sullenly, and the vaqueiro was still jeering at it, when Paulo Cavalcanti and Padre Eugênio, who had observed the chase from higher ground, approached the group of cattlemen. Before they reached the vaqueiro, his fellows began to shout praises for his marvelous performance and to offer added ridicule for his adversary.

  “Viva, Ribeiro Adorno!” Paulo called out. “Viva! My father is correct: ‘The very devil of the sertão!’”

  “It was nothing, Senhor Paulo. Nada! Black Manuel! Agostinho Pequeno! Teimoso the Headstrong! One of these, my young senhor, and there would have been something to see!”

  Estevão Ribeiro Adorno was small and sinewy, his copper-colored features gaunt and parched by the sun. He was forty-nine, dour, suspicious, patient. All his life he had lived in the caatinga, leaving it only for cattle drives to Recife and Salvador.

  Dressed to do battle with the caatinga, he wore leather doublet and leather breeches, leather jacket with thongs in place of buttons, leather shoes, leather knee caps and leather gauntlets, and a wide-brimmed hat of stiff leather.

  Ribeiro Adorno was head vaqueiro at the Cavalcanti ranch, Fazenda da Jurema, which derived its name from a group of acacia-type trees at the main camp. The fazenda occupied 130 square miles and was bordered on the north by a creek, Riacho Jurema, an influent of the Rio Pajéu, which flowed to the Rio São Francisco, sixty-five miles to the south. Fazenda da Jurema lay 250 miles west of Recife, a ten-day journey through three regions typical of the northeast:

  Along the littoral and extending inland for up to sixty miles was the zona da mata, the humid lowlands and valleys between the Borborema Plateau and the Atlantic. Beyond the zona da mata was a transition zone, the agreste, rocky soil with some areas as fertile as the coastal region and others dominated by arid spurs of caatinga, the prevailing vegetation of the third and largest region, the sertão. The deep red soil of the zona da mata supported the sugarcane plantations; the agreste was being occupied by cotton growers and small farmers; and the sertão, which covered half the northeast, was predominantly cattle country, with almost one million head spread out over the low scrub-forest.

  Estevão Ribeiro Adorno was descended from the great clan of Affonso Ribeiro, whom Nicolau Cavalcanti had reluctantly given sanctuary at Santo Tomás. The vaqueiro’s mother was a daughter of a Ribeiro who had left the engenho with his family for Fazenda da Jurema at the end of the previous century. Ribeiro Adorno’s father, Constantino Adorno, had been a mameluco from São Paulo, the Paulistas having roamed the sertão of the northeastern captaincies ever since they found the headwaters of the Rio São Francisco. Ribeiro Adorno himself had married a Paulista mameluco, Idalina, whose Tupi features were strongly evident.

  The opening of the northeast interior for settlement by the Portuguese and their mixed-breed descendants had been similar to the penetration of the sertão beyond São Paulo. The first initiative to venture west of Olinda and Salvador had come from fortune hunters, advancing up along the rivers that emptied into the Atlantic, in search of silver and emeralds. Others, who placed no faith in finding treasure but sought to ennoble themselves through the possession of vast lands, had followed them. Os Poderosos do Sertão (“The Great Men of the Earth”) today held power over these backlands. The family of Garcia d’Avila, for example, had been adding to their properties since the mid-sixteenth century, when their ancestor settled just north of Salvador. By the mid-eighteenth century, the family controlled more than one thousand square miles of ranches along the Rio São Francisco. This was the largest cattle empire, but there were many fazendas like that of the Cavalcantis.

  As absentee landlords, the Cavalcantis left the management of the fazenda to Ribeiro Adorno, in payment for which he received one-quarter of the new calves born annually. Two decades ago, Ribeiro Adorno had attempted to establish a herd of his own. He had trekked to the captaincy of Ceará, northwest of Fazenda da Jurema, but a drought had decimated his cattle and, worse, he had quarreled with the poderosos of the area. He had returned to Pernambuco, and the Cavalcantis had taken him back as head vaqueiro.

  Except for those three years in Ceará, Ribeiro Adorno had served the Cavalcantis since his twelfth birthday. Whenever he drove cattle to Recife, he always called at the engenho; but only three times in those thirty-four years had Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues come to Fazenda da Jurema. And this was Paulo Cavalcanti’s first visit, as part of acquainting himself with the family holdings. It was the end of July 1756, and Padre Eugênio and Paulo had been at the fazenda for two weeks. This roundup of one hundred cattle from a watering hole north of Riacho Jurema would complete the annual count of the herd, which now numbered 5,500 beasts.

  The cattlemen had been resting through the heat of early afternoon when the steer bolted into the caatinga. They now continued their journey to the Riacho Jurema, with one of Ribeiro Adorno’s four sons, Jacinto, taking up the lead. A small, wiry man, Jacinto lounged in the short saddle, feet sticking forward, shoulders hunched, the image of indolence, in direct contrast to his father.

  Approaching the north bank of the Riacho Jurema toward sunset, Jacinto Adorno called for help in getting the cattle across. A herder rode up to him, dismounted, and removed a pack from his pony. Without saying a word, the man unrolled the hide and took out its contents — the blanched skull of a steer. Jacinto assisted him in fitting this object over his head and then attached the hide, cloaklike, to the man’s shoulders.

  The herder looked like an officiant at a primitive ritual. He climbed down the riverbank into the water. The lead steers moved forward, urged along by other herders, until they entered the Riacho Jurema and swam after the man with the skull. Within twenty minutes the cattle were on the south bank.

  The cattle corral and main camp were located a mile from the confluence of the Riacho Jurema and the Rio Pajéu, along which the fazenda had a one-thousand-yard frontage. From the narrow margin along the Pajéu, the ranch fanned out to the northeast and southeast, encompassing the 130 square miles, most of which was covered with caatinga scrub.

  The camp itself was a dusty and odiferous collection of low wattle-and-daub huts, with uneven clay walls, single doors, and small windows. The smell of leather was pervasive: In every hut, the covering on the clay-packed floor, the cots, the storage bags for their possessions and for grain and water, the saddlebags, sword and knife sheaths, whips, litters, bindings, belts, harnesses — all were made of animal hide. From his birth, when the woman who bore him rested on a soft hide, to burial, when death in a far place might bring interment in a rough shroud, the vaqueiro existed in a world of leather.

  That night, after the cattle had been driven across the Riacho Jurema, the settlement resounded with songs and laughter as the cattlemen and their families saluted the patrão’s son, who was returning to Santo Tomás in the morning. A square of ground near the huts had been swept clean, and tree trunks and stumps placed around it as seats. The food offered this night was the same as had been served at every meal during the fortnight Paulo and Padre Eugênio had been here: manioc and beans from the small fields of Ribeiro Adorno’s wife and daughters, and beef and goat meat.

  The Ribeiro Adorno females who were responsible for this fare hovered in the background near the grill, with the womenfolk of other vaqueiros. The youngest of Ribeiro Adorno’s three daughters, Januária, made no attempt to help her mother but squatted on the ground, staring into the fire. Occasionally she’d pick at the meat with a long knife, prying off tiny pieces, blowing on them, and popping them into her mouth, then wiping her lips on the sleeve of her dress. Januária Ribeiro Adorno was fifteen, small like both her parents, with black silky hair and a round, pretty face, but she was a slovenly, awkward girl, and walked with a swaying slouch. She was rude and ill-tempered, her offensiveness such that she had earned the nickname “Piranha” from her two sisters.

  The festa had started soon after sundown. Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues had sent a liberal gift of cachaça to hi
s vaqueiros, and the raw-cane brandy rapidly broke down the reserve the community had shown toward Paulo and the padre. Ribeiro Adorno, who was by nature taciturn and introspective, leapt across the hard earth, demonstrating that he was as expert at dancing as at riding his mettlesome pony.

  A highlight of the evening came when Jacinto and the second guitarist, a mulatto called Stump Head, engaged in a poetic duel. First, Jacinto strummed his guitar, and in a low, beautiful voice, he sang:

  *

  “Come hear my challenge, friends,

  A ballad of the sertão,

  A song beneath God’s heavens

  Where none can rival me!”

  *

  The mulatto’s response began with Jacinto’s last line:

  *

  “Where none can rival me,

  I accept the challenge, friend!

  Here’s a song of Paradise I have,

  O sweet joy never to end!”

  *

  This went on for twenty minutes, a simple lyrical dialogue, not unlike the tensons of troubadours of old. Finally, in trying to reply to a verse delivered by Stump Head, Jacinto became tongue-tied. Ribeiro Adorno filled a cow horn with cachaça and drank a toast to Stump Head’s melodious victory.

  An hour later, Paulo and Eugênio Viana were standing at the entrance to the camp. The opening in the stockade was closed for the night with heavy poles and a thorn barrier, a precaution against jaguars and other wild beasts, as well as against savages, small bands of whom still kept isolated refuges in the white forest.

  Viana was gazing over the barrier into the shadows beyond when suddenly he declared, “Oh, what a stony desert!”

  The despair surprised Paulo. “The creeks and water holes are full, Padre,” he said. “The desert blooms. Ribeiro Adorno and his people rejoice.”

  “And what lies hidden, Paulo? I am thinking of their souls and their hearts in this stony place.”

  Paulo didn’t quite know how to respond to this. “Ribeiro Adorno’s people came here of their own free will,” he offered.

  “Did they?” Viana asked. “They willingly left a valley like Santo Tomás — that fertile Canaan — and chose this barren, lonely land?” Paulo was silent.

  “Would you, Paulo, exchange your life at Santo Tomás for this miserable existence?”

  “No,” Paulo adamantly replied.

  “But we see a never-ending exodus to these backlands of men who are expelled from our valleys.”

  “‘Expelled’ is a strong word, Padre.”

  “What other? First we expelled - expelled or exterminated — Tupiniquin, Tupinambá, Caeté, the great tribes of the coast. Now we send from Canaan, the weak, the dispossessed, and the landless.”

  “The caatinga is menacing and unforgiving, Padre, but Ribeiro Adorno and his comrades are bold and uncomplaining. I don’t believe they feel banished or degraded here. What I see is an almost mystical relationship with the land. Besides, civilization will come to this sertão. Where there’s a cattle trail, tomorrow there will be a road. Then a village. Churches. Schools.”

  “I wonder,” Viana said, and started to walk back toward the area where the vaqueiros were dancing. “By the time civilization advances here, it might come up against a brutal and impetuous race lost in the caatinga and forever locked in battle against nature — and as remote from us as were the first Tupiniquin encountered by the Portuguese.”

  “An educated fool,” Graciliano Cavalcanti called Eugénio Viana, though never within earshot of Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues or Paulo. “The padre sniffs the incense of the French philosophists and freethinkers. He begs not alms but books from my father. ‘Read them,’ Viana tells me, ‘and learn.’ But what have they taught him? To listen to the murmurs of the rabble? To chatter like a parrot about the rights of lowborn men who are by nature lazy?” In conversation with his friends, Graciliano would sometimes add that Eugénio Viana had no keener disciple than Paulo Cavalcanti.

  Graciliano had the same dark hair, thick lashes, and blue-green eyes as Paulo, but his face was more oval. He divided his time between Santo Tomás and Recife, where he associated with a group of arrogant young men, most of whom were planters’ sons.

  When not cardplaying with his friends, Graciliano was at the bordello of Senhora Bárbara Ferreira in São Antônio, a district of Recife across the bridge originally built by Count Maurits. Here Graciliano visited a prostitute, Magdalene, who kept a votive candle burning next to her bed but who was known as The Moor, for she was of Levantine extraction. The Moor whistled through her nostrils when excited by furious copulation, a peculiarity that aroused Graciliano.

  Like the brutish nobles who roamed Lisbon at night, Graciliano and his associates sauntered through Recife’s streets, with a small slave carrying a whale-oil lamp to light their way, and terrorized innocent citizens afoot in the dark. One night Graciliano had killed a man, a drunk Portuguese farrier who had responded to Graciliano’s taunts. The event had so enhanced Graciliano’s prestige among his friends that they honored him by paying a silversmith to engrave upon Graciliano’s sword the words “Justice Lives!”

  In November 1756, three months after Paulo and Viana had returned from the roundup, two slaves ran away from Santo Tomás. Onias, one of the two slaves Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues had manumitted to celebrate Paulo’s safe return, had been saying openly that freedom was no gift to a sixty-seven-year-old black with no home or family.

  Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues was especially aggrieved by this ingratitude and since the laws provided for the revocation of manumission of a former slave who was ungrateful, Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues declared publicly that Onias had forfeited his freedom and was once more a peça. After evening muster on November 14, Onias and a young black, Daniel, had fled the valley of Santo Tomás.

  Graciliano immediately volunteered to hunt them down. Paulo said that this was a mission best undertaken by one of the overseers, but Graciliano insisted on going, arguing that the action of one of the runaways was a direct insult to their father.

  Graciliano rode after them the next morning, with Cipriano Ramos, an overseer, and three trustworthy slaves. With them went four large black dogs trained to sniff out runaways. Initially the dogs had no luck, for the trails they picked up led to the houses of Cavalcanti tenants and cane growers, whose slaves had not seen the fugitives. Graciliano rode on into the next valley, most of which the Cavalcantis owned. Here, a sharecropper had seen the runaway pair crossing a field at dawn. Within an hour, there were reports of two further sightings, and the searchers headed toward a range, a continuation of the ridge that lay south of Santo Tomás.

  The dogs picked up the runaways’ trail near the mouth of a high-walled ravine. Yelping excitedly, they began to probe the bush along the base of the cleft.

  The ravine was thickly forested and blocked with boulders, and the search party dismounted to follow the dogs. Cipriano had just clambered up a huge slab of rock when, pointing furiously toward the side of the ravine, he cried out, “There, Senhor Graciliano! Upon the rocks!”

  “How did they get up there?” Graciliano asked.

  “Goats!” Cipriano said. “Peça goats!”

  The fugitives were on a narrow ledge about 150 feet above the floor of the ravine. They ignored the overseer’s shouts for them to come down and only climbed higher.

  It was getting dark, but Graciliano ordered Cipriano and two of the slaves to go after the runaways. The dogs were barking and whining in their frenzy to find a way up the ravine wall; when they saw Cipriano begin to climb, they bounded over to follow him, but were ordered back.

  The pursuit had no sooner begun than Cipriano let out a stream of oaths as a shower of stones struck him. Graciliano, who stood clear of the projectiles, saw that one of the fugitives, young Daniel, had lost his footing and was clinging to the roots of a stunted tree that grew on the rock face. Onias went down on one knee and stretched an arm out toward him. The root tore loose. With a scream that echoed in the cleft, Daniel fel
l to his death.

  “Down!” Graciliano shouted to Cipriano and the others. He didn’t want to risk the lives of the overseer and two healthy peças. “Come down!”

  The dogs, their eyes glowing in the dark, slavered over the broken body of Daniel. One of the hounds dragged its long tongue over the bloodied rib cage.

  Graciliano drove them away with a horsewhip. When his men reached him, he ordered them to bury Daniel and then to follow him to the house of a cane grower in the valley. They would continue the search for Onias in the morning, Graciliano said. If he got safely over this ridge, then he’d be in the next valley and headed for the southwest.

  Onias kept the search party on the move for the next three days. Finally, they ran him down at the aldeia of Nossa Senhora do Rosário, where he had taken refuge, but the two Jesuits who ran the mission refused to hand him over to Graciliano. He had been found in a manioc field that dawn, so exhausted and ill that he was not expected to live.

  Padre Salvador de Meireles and his assistant, Leandro Taques, stood with Graciliano in the mission square. The aldeia was as poor as Paulo had described it when speaking with Carvalho e Melo the previous October. A tall wooden Cross was raised in front of the church. Two rows of shabby houses flanked the square; tracks meandered in every direction from the plaza to an ox-drawn cane mill and workshops, and to clusters of shacks, the largest group on a knoll behind the church. The mission population was four hundred, mostly Tupi-and Tapuya-speaking natives gathered here from as far as two hundred miles away. The mixed-breed families and the free blacks, some seventy souls in all, had joined the aldeia as artisans and laborers.

  “I’ve asked politely, Padres. Onias belongs to my father.” Graciliano’s voice rose. “Give him to me!”

  “Be reasonable, Graciliano,” Padre Salvador said. “He will be kept under guard. If God allows that he survives, we will return him to Santo Tomás.” Graciliano shook his head furiously. “For the love of Christ, a league along the way and that old man will be dead. Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues will not thank you for the return of a dead slave.”