The caretaker stood outside his compound. The mulatto, keeping an eye on him, sauntered closer to the leading horsemen as they reined in their mounts beside the caretaker.
“Bom dia, Gomes Cabral,” the caretaker said to a horseman bristling with arms. Gomes Cabral was head capanga at Santo Tomás.
“We’re looking for slaves,” he said, without returning the greeting.
“From Santo Tomás?”
“From there. From Engenho Formoso. From Tucuma. Fifty runaways.”
“Not here,” the caretaker said. “Not this way.”
“Who is he?”
“Him?” the caretaker said, looking at the mulatto. “ Yes.”
“A cousin. Diego.”
The capanga gave the mulatto a long, hard look, but then he glanced away, across the mill yard. “No slaves?”
“I saw none, Gomes Cabral.”
The capanga laughed derisively. “João Cunha,” he said, addressing the caretaker by name, “they could pass under your nose and you wouldn’t see or smell them.” “Lazy-Boy” Cunha had been sent from Santo Tomás two years ago to watch over the engenho central, after the overseers had given up trying to break his slothful habits.
To his men, Gomes Cabral said, “Search the place.” He himself, with another rider, wheeled away from Lazy-Boy and Diego and rode into the main building. The animals’ hooves clattered across the concrete floor as the riders moved slowly among the jumble of equipment. They stopped, letting it grow quiet, until the only sound was the water dripping from a broken pipe. Cabral started forward again, deeper into the building, his horse snorting nervously. He passed beside the troughs and tanks.
“Nothing!” he shouted, his voice resounding beneath the iron roof. “Nothing here!”
The two men rode back through the clutter and out into the yard.
Ten minutes later, after searching every building and skirting the forest around the clearing, Gomes Cabral and his men rode back across the Rio Jacuribe.
Celso Cavalcanti, Slipper George, and the slaves emerged from where they had been hiding. Some had been crammed into spaces beneath the enormous measuring tanks. Some had crawled into a long ground-level trough filled with six inches of fetid water and covered along most of its length with planks on which parts of machinery and piping had been stacked. Some had climbed to an upper gallery, thirty feet above the place where the mill had stood, and hid atop a straining tank.
The day became blazing hot, and the atmosphere in the central was stifling. The fugitives had plenty of water, though, and food the escorts had brought from Recife. Hour by hour they waited, ready at a moment’s notice to crawl back into their places of concealment.
“How did you get involved with the Termites?” Celso asked Slipper George later that morning.
“Me, senhor?” Slipper George’s round face creased into a smile. “It’s a long story.”
“We have hours, Jorge.”
“I’m from Ceará. I was there when the struggle for abolition began.” He wasn’t smiling now. “I suppose it was the great drought that changed my life.”
Slipper George had been in the interior of Ceará province when the seca ravaged the sertão of northeast Brazil. His family had been cotton growers in the district of Pedra Branca, 150 miles from the coast. The drought had wiped out their small plantation, driving them to the town of Pedra Branca to seek sustenance. But in the first months of 1878, the second year without rain, Slipper George had buried his mother and father, dead from starvation, and in May 1878, his wife and three children, dead from disease and exhaustion on the flight to Fortaleza, to which they had been heading, along with 400,000 other famine-stricken sertanejos.
“I don’t know why God spared me,” Slipper George said. “I passed through lands, Senhor Celso, that were silent. Nothing lived there. No insects. No birds — they dropped off the branches of dead trees as you passed. No animals. No man or woman. No child. The roadside littered with corpses. Houses filled with the dead. Horrible, senhor. Vampires in those huts, sucking for blood. It was a kindness to set fire to the shacks.
“For those of us who got to the capital, there was no relief. The government sent food, but there were men, senhor, who stole much of the supplies. The people went hungry. The camps were pestholes, where refugees died like flies. There was a woman in our camp: She took a knife to her little brother, carved him up, and ate the flesh. Ai, Jesus Savior, like a savage at the Tupinambás’ boucan!
“The government provided ships to take the Cearenses to the Amazon,” Slipper George said, after describing the disaster. “Thousands sailed from Fortaleza. The agents of the rubber companies promised Paradise. I didn’t go. Enter that green hell? After surviving the seca? I wasn’t louco. Besides, I’d got a job working with the port laborers. And I saw slaves who had come through the same hell, but their suffering was only beginning. They were driven to the coast for sale in the hundreds, living skeletons. This was too much: slaves who had survived the seca, punished for living! I knew nothing of slaves, Senhor Celso — at Pedra Branca, we were too poor to own any — but my heart went out to those poor things standing on the sandy beach.”
“That’s how you joined the abolitionists?”
“Ah, my young senhor, you should have seen us, the men of the sea on the beach at Fortaleza: ‘From the port of Ceará, no more slaves will be embarked!’”
This had been the battle cry of the “Dragon of the Sea,” Francisco do Nascimento, a boatman who piloted the great jangadas in Fortaleza Bay carrying out cargo to ships in the roadstead. The Dragon and another raftsman, João Napoleao, both of them ex-slaves, had refused to ferry out to ships a group of slaves who had been sold and were to be transported to the south of Brazil.
“The slavers tried everything to break our strike,” Slipper George continued. “Threats. Bribes. Police. Not one jangada set sail! Not one slave left the port!”
This action had touched off a wave of abolitionist sentiment that had spread through the province, leading to its abolition of slavery in March 1884.
Toward late afternoon, put at ease by the long, uneventful hours since the visit of the capangas, Celso and Slipper George went outside. The other guides and the fugitives stayed confined in the building. Crossing the mill yard, Slipper George shouted a greeting to Diego, who was sitting outside Lazy-Boy Cunha’s house keeping an eye on the caretaker, snoozing beside him.
They had just reached the bridge when Slipper George suddenly cried “Silence!” Then: “Horses!”
Celso heard them too, still far in the distance where the road was hidden by trees.
“Under the bridge!” Slipper George shouted. “Pronto!”
They hurled themselves off the timbers into the Rio Jacuribe, six feet deep here, and in moments they were clinging to reeds and grass against the bank nearest the mill yard, with the bridge above them. They were safe, with only seconds to spare.
“Capangas?” Celso queried in a fierce whisper, as the very bank they clung to shook from the hooves pounding above, and dust and debris rained down on them.
When the horsemen had passed over into the mill yard, Celso and Slipper George cautiously moved up behind the thick brush that grew on the riverbank beside the end of the bridge. They saw a dozen or so men in the yard. The riders were not capangas but a detachment of the Guarda Nacional of Rosário district.
“Our Lady!” Celso Cavalcanti appealed. “Heaven help us now.”
Duarte Cavalcanti led the troop.
“The slaves,” Slipper George said, looking toward the main building. “They’ll know to hide.”
Celso watched his brother pace his horse toward Lazy-Boy Cunha and Diego. Celso prayed as he had never prayed before.
Duarte Cavalcanti was far more like their father in appearance. Ten years older than Celso, he was robust and broad-chested, and, like Senhor Rodrigo, sported glorious whiskers.
“Boas tardes, Senhor Duarte,” Lazy-Boy Cunha said, with his hat in his hands and his eyes meeting
those of Senhor Duarte’s horse.
“Boas tardes . . . tardes senhor! Boas tardes, my Capitão! Boas . . . boas tardes, João!”
It was Diego, portraying the drunkest man in the world. He came lurching toward Duarte Cavalcanti, swaying, almost tripping, a look of stupefaction on his face, a toothy grin. As if struggling to keep his balance, he flung his arm around Lazy-Boy’s shoulders.
“I’m Diego!” the mulatto announced. “Cousin Diego of João Cunha!”
Duarte Cavalcanti looked down at him disdainfully.
Lazy-Boy Cunha studied the horse’s eyes.
“Escravos!” Duarte Cavalcanti said. “Any sign of them?”
Lazy-Boy shook his head.
Diego stopped smiling. He still clung to Lazy-Boy, but his expression changed radically. Now it was the look of a drunk at a wake, trying desperately to appear mournful. A performance that would have done Senhor Agamemnon proud!
“Aieee, senhor! The capangas came, too. Nothing, senhor. We look. We watch. All day. Nada!” Two fingers of the hand on Lazy-Boy’s shoulder bored into Cunha’s flesh.
“Nada,” Lazy-Boy croaked.
“Bah!” Cavalcanti said, with a snort that ruffled his mustaches. “Go back to your cachaça.” Then he ordered his men to leave.
As the riders started back to the bridge, Duarte himself cantered toward the main building, peering inside as he passed the open doors. On he rode to the steam house and other buildings; then he came back to Lazy-Boy and Diego.
“Close those doors!” he demanded.
“Yes, senhor,” João Cunha said.
“Immediatemente, patrão!” Diego said, giving Lazy-Boy a shove that sent him on his way, and starting off behind him with long, unsteady steps.
Duarte Cavalcanti rode after his men, who were already across the bridge.
“Thank you, God,” Celso Cavalcanti whispered below the bridge.
Slipper George smiled broadly and, reaching out, squeezed the young senhor’s arm fiercely.
They left the engenho central at 10:00 P.M. They took Lazy-Boy Cunha and his family with them. Lazy-Boy came willingly; he was terrified that Senhor Duarte Cavalcanti would discover his complicity, forced though it had been. On the march north to the tracks of the Great Western, they kept to the forest, avoiding the strip that had been cleared for the railway to the engenho central, for somewhere along there was the camp of the men repairing the private line’s railbed. At 5:00 A.M. they reached the Recife lawyer’s engenho, where they sheltered through the next day.
The following night, on the march to the stone quarry, the rear group, led by the inimitable Diego and trailing a quarter-mile behind the others, stumbled into an army officer and four men who were out searching for a horse thief. When the officer had satisfied himself that they had no connection with the thief, he let them pass — affronted by what it perceived as the imperial government’s neglect of the army by keeping it undermanned, and with its ranks including many freed slaves, the army was showing an increasing reluctance to pursue runaways.
On the fourth night, confident of success now, Celso and Slipper George led the final dash to Itamaracá Island. At 3:00 A.M., they stood with all fifty slaves on the bank of the broad river separating Itamaracá Island from the mainland. They were ferried to Itamaracá ten at a time on a jangada that had been left at this designated crossing point by other members of the Termite Club.
On the outskirts of the island village of Pilar, Celso and Slipper George left the slaves hiding in a patch of jungle and went ahead to the Teatro Grande, which stood at the end of a long lane overgrown with weeds and bushes. They approached the building cautiously, keeping to the trees beside the path.
The double doors were slightly open. Treading softly, Slipper George entered first. The benches were piled up to one side. In a moment, Slipper George cried, “Senhor Celso! Come in! There’s no one here.”
But, as Celso entered, another voice called out: “Welcome! Welcome, my brave young fellows!”
Senhor Agamemnon de Andrade Melo swept out of a dark corner on the stage. A thin shaft of moonlight from a hole in the roof showed him to be attired in black, a great cloak over his shoulders. He leapt down to the floor and hurried over to embrace Celso.
“Oh, my boy, what a lovely thing you’ve done!”
“We brought fifty slaves, Agamemnon!”
“No, Celso —”
“Yes, Agamemnon. Fifty!”
“Not slaves, Celso. They are free!”
In the front parlor of his house the next afternoon, Dr. Fábio Cavalcanti was staring down at the fine leather boots he had given Celso for his twentieth birthday. The boots were ruined.
“Thirty-two slaves stolen from Santo Tomás.” Fábio had learned of the flight of runaways from the engenho two days ago, informed by a telegram from Rosário. Celso had come home, Fábio had been questioning him, and Celso had now confessed his part. “Why did you do it?” Fábio asked.
“I’m with the Termites. I had to go.”
“God help you, Celso, if your father learns you were there.”
“Please, Uncle, you won’t tell him?”
Fábio moved his eyes from the battered boots to his nephew’s face.
“No, Celso. If he finds out, it won’t be from me.” There was in Fábio’s expression just the hint of admiration.
The procession started forty-five minutes late, the delay caused by Rodrigo Cavalcanti’s insistence on a final inspection of the usina. At 11:45 A.M., the director of the Rosário filharmônica raised his baton for the national anthem. When the anthem ended, there was a short pause, and then the filharmônica began to play the religious march “Santa Cecilia.” Six altar boys in lace-adorned surplices led off the procession across the mill yard, followed by Rosário’s priests, José Machado and Epitacio Murtinho. Immediately behind them, Rodrigo Cavalcanti and his sons led the group of planters who had invested in the usina. Behind the owners came a body of dignitaries and rural magnates, then the usina manager and foremen, and other guests invited to partake in the ceremony blessing the grand enterprise.
It was September 11, 1886, the day for the inauguration of Usina Jacuribe. The procession moved past five hillocks of cane in the yard, the towering lots from Santo Tomás, and four other plantations. Crowds of spectators stood behind whitewashed lines painted on the ground to the left and right of the entrance to the main building, where capangas were stationed to curb any excessive enthusiasm.
With the filharmônica’s bold, brassy music swelling, and the first firecrackers snapping, the procession entered the cavernous iron building and moved beside a long feeder tray to the massive Fives-Lille mill. Padre José said a prayer and asked the Lord’s blessing on this great piece of machinery and sprinkled holy water in its direction. He repeated the appeal as he moved slowly through the maze of equipment — engines, measuring tanks, sedimentary troughs, clarifiers, boilers, centrifuges.
The procession emerged from the building to a tumultuous cheer from those outside and the first mighty barrage of rocket fire.
A Guarda Nacional detachment presented arms as the dignitaries exited, and stood by smartly as the procession passed on its way to the blessing of other sections of the usina: the boiler house; the sheds for bagasse, the cane trash for fuel; the laboratory; and other outbuildings. Padre José made only a perfunctory gesture toward the distillery and its eight hundred-gallon vats and casks, for he held strong views regarding the abuse of cachaça.
It took more than half an hour of slow marching, with the filharmônica now in tow, for the procession to circuit the usina grounds and return to the main building. At this moment, a small, energetic man sought Rodrigo’s attention.
“Senhor Barão?” (Rodrigo Alves Cavalcanti, for “services in the Province of Pernambuco for the good of the Empire and national honor,” as the decree of four weeks ago read, had been granted a baronetcy by Dom Pedro Segundo: Barão de Jacuribe.) The man addressing the barão was M. Alain de Lamartine, the mill m
anager. “Everything is ready.”
There were calls for silence from the guests, as the barão wanted to say a few words:
“I cannot greet this bright new dawn without humbly giving thanks to our Lord God for the old planters who came before us. From the day of Nicolau Gonçalves Cavalcanti, the first of our family to reach this promised land, our forebears persevered at Santo Tomás and in this valley of the Jacuribe.
“And now, in this golden moment, I raise my eyes to a new horizon. Senhores, for a long time the engenhos of Pernambuco have struggled against competition from many quarters — from the sugar-beet producers of Europe to the cane growers of the West Indies. The usina will be our salvation!”
Then, guided by a smiling M. Alain, with Vivas rising from two hundred throats even before he reached for the valves and levers, the barão started the 60-horsepower steam engine. On the platform, the mill workers fed canes to the first set of rollers, and the first juice poured into a trough down below.
After the inauguration of the mill, the senhor barão delivered another round of speeches, this time to the mass of agregados and seasonal laborers. His promises of progress and order were no less grand than those made to the senhores.
When the speechmaking ended, the senhor barão directed the crowd’s attention to the more immediate benefits of the day: three oxen roasting nearby, six pigs, a mountain of sweet cakes, a wagonful of casks of Santo Tomás cachaça. “Viva! Viva! Viva!” the people roared.
As eager as they were for the festa, some agregados had misgivings about the coming of the usina. A few months ago, three families of agregados who had squatted at Santo Tomás had been ordered to move out of the valley. They were gone now, their shacks demolished and the rich red earth far around their place planted with cuttings of cane.
After leaving the agregados, Rodrigo Cavalcanti mingled with the guests who were being entertained by the filharmônica as they sipped champagne and enjoyed a light meal served at a marquee. There had been no ladies at the usina; the donas and their daughters were at the Casa Grande of Santo Tomás, where they were getting ready for a banquet to which eighty guests were invited.
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