“I could love no place as much as the valley of my family,” Fábio had told Joaquim Nabuco. “For generations, the Cavalcantis of Santo Tomás have been on those lands. Of course, the great estate of our forefathers has been subdivided by inheritance, but even now, twenty thousand acres belong to the engenho, three-quarters of which have never been cultivated. For us, a blessing for the future; for Brazil, a curse!”
Guilherme Cavalcanti, the father of Fábio and Rodrigo — a third son had died in 1872 — had himself died in 1874, leaving Fábio one-third of Santo Tomás and property at Recife and Olinda. Today Recife, with its three main districts — Recife or São Pedro, the old quarter; São Antônio; Boa Vista — separated by salt creeks and the Rio Capibaribe, was, after Rio de Janeiro and the Bahia, the third city of Brazil, with a population of 140,000. At Olinda, there remained fine town houses dating from the days when the senhores de engenho looked down with contempt, from those emerald-green hills, on the peddlers and artisans of Recife. But, though the presence of the cassocked faithful was still marked in the steep streets between ancient monasteries and churches, Olinda, too, was changing. Boardinghouses and music pavilions proliferated beneath the palms near the water’s edge, and there were bathing machines for those seeking a curative plunge in the surf.
Fábio’s home and medical practice were at Boa Vista, and his life there a total break from the patriarchal regime of the engenho. Fábio saw an evil for Brazil in the vast landholdings that kept hundreds of impoverished families tied to the large estates like serfs. Recife teemed with indigent thousands who flocked from the countryside to find work, unskilled men who would be far better off as small farmers but had no hope of finding good land or the means to buy it. On lowlying, swampy lands below São Antônio district and on hilly parts of the Capibaribe valley, they built rude huts — mocambos, from a Bantu word meaning “cave.”
Here at Santo Tomás itself, there were 180 families of agregados, many of whom worked for two or three days a week for no compensation except the right to grow food for themselves. Senhor Rodrigo was not without sympathy for the poor. “You know as well as I do, Fábio, there are families who have been with us for generations. This valley is their home as much as it is ours,” Rodrigo had said on occasion. “In our father’s day, there were two hundred slaves; I must do with eighty-five. The agregados can’t provide enough labor; more and more, I have to turn to the idlers and vagabonds who drift in from the sertão for the harvest. Cane trash! I can’t walk in the fields without a man to watch out for me.”
Now, during this latter part of January, it was the height of the cane harvest and Rodrigo Cavalcanti was indeed escorted by armed capangas when he rode among the gangs of itinerant cane cutters; but from the veranda where the three men were sitting, the scene could not have been more tranquil. At the foot of the gentle slope toward the river, smoke from the chimneys at the mill and distillery rose above the small forest behind the sugar works. To the right of the veranda, past the tall Cross on the chapel patio, a red ribbon of road winding through the palms and tamarinds and other trees marked the edge of the cane fields nearest to the Casa Grande. The rolling hills behind the road were planted with sugarcane, which looked like waving grass in the distance. The crests of some hills close to the mansion were crowned with clumps of trees; the heights far to the north bore dark smudges below the ridges; and elsewhere, too, there were survivors of the great forest that once covered the valley.
With Joaquim Nabuco, Dr. Fábio could talk about the curse of great estates, and indeed his concern for the landless mass of Brazilians was genuine. He was a man of the city, and much about life at the engenho struck him as quaint and old-fashioned — and brutal. But each time he returned to Santo Tomás, he had the feeling of coming home. His mother, Dona Eliodora Alves Cavalcanti, lived here. And in the valley and across the hills south toward the town of Rosário were Cavalcantis and in-laws and relatives too distant to be more than favored agregados. Rosário was referred to no longer as a vila but as Cidade da Rosário; its status as a city reflected its position as município with a population of 2,300.
Sitting with Rodrigo and Celso, Fábio could hear the laughter of his children, two girls and a boy, who were on the chapel patio, the boy holding the string of a red-and-white kite. Near the children, sitting in the shade of two ancient trees ablaze with yellow blooms, with her back to him, was his wife, Renata.
Dr. Fábio would always remain in Rodrigo’s debt for the welcome Rodrigo had given them on their return from Paraguay. His brothers Rodrigo and Leopoldo (who had since died) had both chosen girls from the noblest class of Pernambucan families. One sister, Virginia, had given Guilherme Cavalcanti cause for painful heart-searching when she became enamored of the pale mulatto Cicero de Oliveira. But Senhor Guilherme ultimately consented to the union, for Dr. Cicero had fine features, held a degree from Edinburgh University, spoke several languages, and owned an engenho in Rosário district, all of which elevated the mulatto to the upper class.
From the start, Rodrigo Cavalcanti had been greatly taken with Renata, whom he called his little sister. Rodrigo’s wife, Dona Josepha, the mother of Celso and seven others, was a veritable Amazon, who along with Dona Eliodora, ruled the Casa Grande. Beside Josepha, Renata looked like a rosy-cheeked china doll. The mother of two girls, Ana and Amalia, eleven and thirteen, and a son, Emílio, nine, she had lost none of her beauty.
“Joaquim Nabuco fans the fires of slave insurrection,” Rodrigo was now declaring. “It will be the ruin of agriculture.”
Rodrigo Cavalcanti knew that Fábio and even Celso were both in the camp of the abolitionists, but this didn’t deter him from speaking his mind. Fábio and he had always been frank with each other. As for Celso, Senhor Rodrigo welcomed a chance to lecture the young whelp infatuated by ideas that, to his father’s way of thinking, verged on anarchism.
“Joaquim Nabuco isn’t a firebrand or fanatic,” Fábio said in reply to Rodrigo. “He’s said on every occasion that emancipation must be handled calmly and without hatred.”
“I read the Diário, Fábio. What’s the reality? Is it the church of São José?”
“São José was a tragedy. What happened there can’t be related to the abolition movement.” The election for national deputy had been held on December 1. In the ward of São José, when the ballots were counted and showed a victory for Nabuco’s Conservative opponent, a Liberal mob rioted, causing the death of two Conservative election officials and the destruction of the ballot papers. A new election was held across the entire First District of Recife on January 9, and Joaquim Nabuco won overwhelmingly.
“Joaquim Nabuco may personally advocate moderation,” Rodrigo said. “But those who foment rebellions and encourage slaves to run away to Ceará consider their crime legitimized by the appeals of the son of a great Brazilian statesman.”
“No, Rodrigo, it isn’t Joaquim Nabuco who destroys slavery; it’s the spirit of our time.”
“I accept that,” Rodrigo said.
“Then, why continue to oppose abolition?”
“With the womb-free and the elderly, I have no argument against freeing them. Slavery is doomed. But we’ve had slavery for three centuries. We can’t abolish the system overnight. Let it die gradually, as the law provides. You know, Fábio, there are planters who talk of taking up arms here in Pernambuco. What can we expect in our south? The same bloody convulsion that tore apart the United States?”
“The situation is totally different,” Fábio said.
“Is it? Ceará is free of slaves. Amazonas. Rio Grande do Sul will be next, and other provinces will follow. The coffee plantations have a million slaves. Without their labor, the fazendeiros will face ruin. Do you honestly expect the Paulistas to surrender their slaves without a fight?”
“The fazendeiros won’t go to war and destroy the empire for a cause that’s foredoomed,” Fábio replied. “It’s false to compare our situation with that of the Confederacy in the United States. There’s a fundam
ental difference in our attitude toward the slave.” Fábio looked in the direction of the senzala.
“We didn’t make a religion of slavery,” he continued. “We branded them in Africa, yes, with the mark of the slave, but it was our mark, not God’s. We didn’t look upon the black as ordained by the Almighty to labor for us. The bigotry needed to sustain a bloody crusade to defend slavery has never taken root in Brazil.”
Celso gazed at his uncle with awe. Celso was the youngest of Rodrigo’s three sons. The oldest, Duarte, lived at the engenho with his family but was away this day. The second son, Gilberto, was a teacher at a private school in Rio de Janeiro. Celso was slim, almost consumptive-looking, his features grave beyond his years but for his brilliant blue-green eyes. For the past two years, while attending Recife Law School, he had lived with his uncle’s family at their house in Boa Vista. Dr. Fábio’s home was open to a regular stream of abolitionists and freemasons — Fábio was Grand Master of one of Recife’s lodges — from whom the student got many of the ideas that made Senhor Rodrigo fear an incipient anarchist. Rodrigo’s concern was groundless, though Celso did harbor a secret passion that would have been just as upsetting to Senhor Rodrigo: Celso wanted to be a priest. Fábio knew this, but the subject had not yet been broached to his brother. Rodrigo maintained the chapel of Santo Tomás and made regular pilgrimages to Mass at Rosário, but he kept a distance between himself and the clergy and was unlikely to greet with enthusiasm Celso’s abandoning the toga for a cassock.
When Fábio stopped speaking, Celso said nothing: He might tramp through the streets of Recife with other students singing that Joaquim Aurélio Nabuco was their guiding light, but in the presence of his father, he respectfully curbed his defiance and, unless spoken to, rarely uttered a word.
Rodrigo pursued the topic: “True, Brazil doesn’t have the climate of hatred that would set brother against brother over the slavery question, but what about the anarchists” — Rodrigo’s favorite catchword - “and subversives who say our monarchy is an anachronism in America?”
“I don’t fear a minority of hotheads. The mass of our people love the emperor. How much greater will their respect be if Pedro is our Lincoln?”
Rodrigo grimaced. “What support can they offer His Majesty? Flowers strewn in his path? They have no power. They do not vote for parliament. If the slave owners of the south turn against Pedro, republican agitators may seduce them. That virus is spreading, Fábio. We’re no longer dealing with a few fools and crackpots or” — he cast a censorious eye over Celso — “student revolutionaries. The Republican party has become a dangerous reality.”
“Dom Pedro has held Brazil on course for almost half a century, Rodrigo. The monarchy will survive abolition.”
“My brother, I pray to God you’re right.”
His Majesty was benign toward virulent foes like the Republicans. But almost three years ago, some of these radicals had started a potentially alarming new enterprise: on April 21, 1882, a group of men launched a republican club, the Clube Tiradentes, in honor of the republican martyr Alferes Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, the Toothpuller.
Dom Pedro had made two other powerful enemies. The first was the Church. In 1864, Pope Pius IX had condemned the Masonic Order, which flourished in Brazil among laymen and priests alike. But Dom Pedro, tolerant of other faiths and beliefs, had exercised his authority over the Brazilian church and refused to sanction the encyclical for publication in the empire. In 1872, Dom Vital Maria de Oliveira, bishop of Olinda, challenged the Crown by ordering the lay brotherhoods of the Roman Catholic Church to expel Masons from their ranks. The brotherhoods appealed to Pedro, who in turn asked Dom Vital to rescind his order. The bishop refused, and was arrested, tried for contempt of the Crown, and sentenced to four years’ hard labor.
The second group whose enmity Pedro had earned was the army. By this year 1885, its ranks had been allowed to dwindle to thirteen thousand scattered in barracks throughout the country. Officers who had battled their way through the esteros and jungle of Paraguay increasingly grumbled about Pedro’s ingratitude to the courageous veterans of his great war.
There was one final and critical problem facing His Majesty: He was fifty-nine, his health impaired by diabetes and malarial attacks, and many of his subjects were giving serious consideration to the question of his successor, the imperial princess, Dona Isabel, who was married to the Frenchman Prince Gaston d’Orléans, comte d’Eu. The comte had returned triumphant from Paraguay, and for a time had enjoyed the affection of the Brazilians, but his quiet domesticity and his French manners had gradually dulled the luster of his battlefield glory. Dona Isabel was charming and intelligent, and generally popular, but it was feared that a third empire with her at the helm would be steered by the hand of the comte.
Outside the Casa Grande, Rodrigo Cavalcanti, for all his talk of the dire consequences of abolition, suddenly turned to his brother and said, “You’re right, of course. Slavery must go. Have you heard a dissenting word from me about your plans to free Rosário?”
“No, Rodrigo.”
Dr. Fábio had been invited by a group of abolitionist townsmen to be guest of honor at Rosário two days hence for the launching of the Associão Libertadora Rosário. Its objectives were to buy the freedom of slaves in the city or to persuade individual slave owners to voluntarily manumit their slaves, a tactic that had succeeded, town by town, in Ceará.
“Go to Rosário, Fábio. Speak to the citizens. Encourage them to free their slaves. I’ll be the first to rejoice in the liberation of our city.”
“Your support is crucial.”
“You have it. My gift, too: two milreis. Enough, I hope, to buy freedom for three or four.”
Young Celso chose this moment to voice an opinion: “God would bless Pai, too, if the slaves of Santo Tomás were freed.”
Rodrigo took a long, deep breath. “Celso . . . ”
“Yes, Pai?”
“Have you listened to a word?”
“Every word, Pai.”
Rodrigo addressed Fábio: “Is this how he attends his professors?”
“Don’t blame Celso. He’s impatient. Not so, Celso?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“You won’t have much of a future, boy, if Brazil is bankrupt, with its plantations a wasteland.”
“May I speak, Pai?”
“Yes,” Rodrigo grunted.
“I know the cutters who migrate to the valley and the poor labor they give. I’ve seen the trouble you have getting the agregados into the fields. A day or two of work and they must rest. This won’t change, Pai, so long as there’s slavery.”
“It will never change. They’re bone-lazy idlers.”
“Yes, Pai, they are lazy, but it’s because they see no dignity in working alongside slaves in the fields.”
“Ah! How many times I’ve heard this. Since the first Tupi was plucked out of the forest in the days of the donatários, no free man has wanted to lift a finger in Brazil. Tell me then, Celso, who built Engenho Santo Tomás?”
“It’s not the same, Pai. These are poor peasants. Their fathers didn’t have a great valley to colonize.”
“So we should give them our land?”
Fábio saw Celso drifting into dangerous waters. “What he’s saying, Rodrigo, is that with abolition, the slave won’t be there to degrade the value of labor in the eyes of the agregados.”
“Exatamente! The slaves will abandon the plantations. Our harvests will be at the mercy of these lazy rascals.”
“Give them a chance, Rodrigo. Empty the senzala. Let all who work in our cane fields be free men. In time, the agregados will learn to take pride in their labor.”
“Go to Rosário,” Rodrigo said flatly. “Convince the citizens of our city to free their slaves.” He directed his next words at Celso: “I was told this week that there are one hundred and sixteen registered at Rosário. At the engenhos and on the cane fields of the district, we have twelve hundred. Tell me how to redeem this number,
Celso — not one or two house slaves or Negroes for hire in the streets, but twelve hundred slaves?”
Celso looked at his father with that intense, grave expression, but offered no reply.
“Costa Santos’s extravagância” — as Rodrigo Cavalcanti sometimes referred to it — lay eight miles from the Casa Grande. Fábio and Rodrigo rode there the next morning, taking the old road to Rosário into the valley beyond Santo Tomás. Seven miles to the northwest at a crossroads, they turned off to the right, a mile to the Jacuribe, which flowed through both valleys. Across a wooden bridge was the extravagância.
The Cavalcanti brothers dismounted at the bridge, leaving their horses with two capangas who had ridden out with them.
The two men walked along the front of a massive building, its zinc roof supported by iron columns. Off to the left was another solid structure, fire-damaged, with a tall brick chimney reaching as high as some of the forest giants behind it. There were numerous smaller structures, too, and near the opening on the north side, abandoned on its meter-wide track, a forlorn-looking little steam engine someone had taken care to cover with palm fronds.
“Costa Santos’s extravagância” — the East Pernambucan United Sugar Milling Company — was an engenho central that should have been capable of crushing 100,000 kilograms of cane every twenty-four hours. It stood deserted, its promoter, one Vinicius Costa Santos, gone to his grave, and its shareholders commiserated with one another in their London clubs over its foundering.
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