Part 3

Systematic observation and methodical exclusion of the classes of humor already found inefficient, led Pontes to discover the weak point of his stern adversary. The Major delighted in tales of Englishmen and friars. But they must be stories of both together. Separate, they were a failure. Just an old man’s crankiness. At the appearance of red-faced Britishers, with cork helmets, checked clothes, formidable boots and pipes, side by side with rotund friars doting upon a hogshead of wine and revelling in feminine flesh, the Major would open his mouth and suspend his chewing like a child enticed by candy; and when the comic climax was reached, he would laugh, but without exaggeration enough to upset the equilibrium of his circulation.

Pontes with infinite patience bet on that class of fun and stuck to it. He increased the program, the spiciness, the dose of malice and systematically bombarded the Major’s great artery with the fruits of his clever manipulation.

When the story was a long one, rendered so because the narrator added flourishes with a view to hiding the final climax and heightening the effect, the old man would become highly interested and during the artful pauses would ask for explanations or continuation:

“And the rascally Englishman?... And what happened next?... Did Mr. John call for help?”

Although the fatal peal of laughter was long in coming, the future collector did not despair, pinning his faith on the fable of the pitcher that went so often to the well that it finally broke.

The calculation was well made. Psychology, as well as Lent, was on his side.

One day, Carnival having passed, the Major gathered his friends about an enormous stuffed fish, a present from the clerk.

Carnival sport had enlivened the hearts of the guests as well as of the host who on that day was pleased with himself and the whole world, as though he had seen the blue-bird.

When the fish was brought in, the Major’s eyes sparkled; it was well worth all the bottled aperitives and reflected in all faces an epicurean tenderness. Fine fish was the Major’s delight, especially when cooked by Gertrude. And for that dinner Gertrude had excelled in a seasoning that transcended all culinary art and soared to the height of the most exquisite poetry. What fish! Vatel could have signed it with the pen of impotence dipped in the ink of envy, said the clerk, well up as a reader of Brillat-Savarin and other authorities on good things to eat.

Between swallows of rich wine the fish was eaten with religious rites. No one dared break the silence of that bromatological beatitude.

Pontes foresaw the opportune moment to play his game. He had brought full-cocked a case of an Englishman, his wife and two bearded friars, an anecdote built from the best grey cells of his brain, rendered ever more perfect through long nights of insomnia. It had been kept in ambush for days awaiting the moment in which everything would contribute towards the greatest possible effect.

It was the last hope of the villain, his last cartridge. If it failed to go off he would decidedly blow out his brains. He saw that it was impossible to manipulate a more ingenious torpedo. Should the aneurism resist the shock, then the aneurism was a bluff, the great artery a fiction, Chernovitz mere twaddle, medical science worthless and Dr. Ioduret an ass and he, Pontes, the dullest, most insipid creature under the sun, therefore unworthy to live.

Pontes meditated thus, alluring the poor victim with the eyes of psychology when the Major met him halfway and winked his left eye at him.

“The time has come,” thought the scoundrel and in the most natural way he took up the little bottle of sauce as though casually and began to read the label:

“Perrins, Lea & Perrins. I wonder if this might be a relation of that Lord Perrins, who baffled the two bearded friars?”

Inebriated by the seductions of the fish the Major’s eyes lit up coveteously, greedy for a spicy tale:

“Two bearded friars and a Lord! The story must be A-1! Fire away, Chipmunk.”

And chewing mechanically he became absorbed in the fatal story.

The anecdote ran on insidiously in a natural strain, told with a master’s art, firm and sure, with strategic progression, showing real genius, until it nearly reached the climax. Around about this point the entanglement so held the attention of the poor old man that he remained motionless, with lips parted and an olive, stuck on his fork in mid air. A half smile,--a detained smile, the spark of laughter which is the preparation for a peal of laughter, lit up his face.

Pontes hesitated. He foresaw the break of the artery. Conscience cramped his tongue, but only for an instant. Pontes let conscience quiet down again and pulled the trigger.

For the first time in his life Major Antonio Pereira da Silva Bentes broke into a hearty peal of laughter; frank, resounding,--which could be heard all down the street; a peal of laughter equal to that of Teufelsdröckh before John Paul Richter. The first and the last, because in the midst of it his astonished guests saw him fall face-downwards over his plate, while at the same time a gush of blood reddened the table-cloth.

The assassin rose hallucinated and making the most of the confusion, slipped out onto the street, a modern Cain. He hid himself at home, locked in his room, his teeth chattering the night through, in a cold sweat. The least noise filled him with terror: was it the Police?

Weeks later he began to get over that soul-fright which everyone attributed to sorrow over the death of his friend. Notwithstanding, he had ever before his eyes the same sight: the old man fallen over his plate, spurting blood while the echo of his last peal of laughter still rang in the air.

While in this deplorable condition, Pontes received a letter from the relative in Rio. Among other things the holder of the trump card wrote: “Since you did not advise me in time, as per our agreement, I learned of Bentes death only through the newspapers; I looked up the Minister but it was too late, the appointment of his successor had already been signed. Your frivolousness has lost you the best chance of your life. Remember this for your future guidance: _tarde venientibus ossa_, and be smarter in the future.”

A month later they found him hanging from a beam in his room with his tongue lolling, his body rigid.

He had hung himself by a leg of his drawers.

When the news got about town everyone found it amusing. The Portuguese grocer commented thus to the cashiers:

“What a fellow! Even on his dying day he cracks a joke! Hung himself by a drawers leg! Only Pontes would remember to do that.”

And they repeated in chorus a series of “Ha! has!!” ... the only epitaph given him by man.

THE PLANTATION BUYER

No worse farm existed than that of Espigão. It had already ruined three owners, which made superstitious people say: “The thing’s a white elephant!” The last holder, a certain David Moreira de Souza, acquired it at auction, convinced that it was a great bargain; but there he was, too, head over ears in debt, scratching his head disconsolately....

The coffee plantations stripped every other year, lashed by hail or blackened by frost, never yielded enough of a crop to fill a deposit.

The overgrown pastures were full of white-ant heaps intertwined with choking weeds, teeming with ticks; any ox turned loose there soon became thin, with its ribs showing, full of parasites, pitifully sorry and sore.

The underbrush that had taken the place of the native forest, revealed by the indiscreet presence of the brambles, the poorest kind of dry soil. On such soil the manioc shyly put forth little knotted branches; the large species of sugar-cane took on the aspect of the most slender kind and these in turn became similar to little bamboos that passed through the grinding cylinders untouched.

The horses were full of lice. The pigs that escaped the plague never got beyond the Pharaonic thinness of Egyptian cows.

On every side the cutting-ant reigned supreme, day and night busily mowing down the grass of the pastures, so that in October the sky would be darkened by clouds of winged ants, male and female, frolicking about in their love-making.

Unopened roads, fallen fences, laborer’s dwellings full of leaks, with shaky roofs, foretelling ugly ruins. Even in the manor-house, everything indicated approaching ruin; plastering falling, floors worm-eaten; paneless windows; rickety furniture; bulging walls ... was there anything whole to be found there?

Within this tumble-down setting, the planter, grown old under the burden of long disillusionment, and besides, gnawed by the voracious interest, without hope and without remedy, a hundred times a day scratched the cow-lick of hair on his grey head.

His wife, poor Dona Izaura, having lost her autumnal strength, gathered upon her face all the freckles and crows-feet invented by the years, hand in hand with a hard-working life.

Zico the eldest child had turned out a good-for-nothing, fond of rising at ten, plastering his hair until eleven and spending the rest of his time in unlucky flirtations.

Aside from this vagabond, there was Zilda, then about seventeen, a pretty girl, but more sentimental than was reasonable and good for her parents’ peace of mind. The girl spent her time reading love stories and building castles in Spain....

There was only one way out of such a situation: sell the darned _fazenda_, to be able to breathe free from mortgages. It was difficult, however, at a time when coffee sold at five _mil réis_ the _arroba_;[5] it was hard to lay one’s hands on a fool of the dimensions required. Attracted by clever advertisements, some buyers found their way to Espigão, but turned up their noses, swearing at the useless journey and making no offer.

“It would be dear as a gift!” they would murmur to themselves.

Moreira’s cow-lick, after repeated scratching, yielded a mystifying plan: to place along the edge of the thickets and one or other openings accessible to visitors, plants of good standard woods, transplanted from the neighboring forests. The lunatic did so and even more: stuck into a hollow a tree of _Pau d’aiho_, imported from São Paulo’s rich red soil and fertilized the coffee plants on the edge of the path just enough to conceal the poverty of the rest. Wherever the sun’s rays disclosed more clearly the poorness of the soil, there the hallucinated old man covered it over with rich sifted earth....

One day he received a letter from his business agent announcing a new buyer. “Handle your man carefully,” he advised, “know how to work the game and you have him. His name is Pedro Trancoso, very wealthy, very young, very loquacious, and he wants a fazenda for pleasure. It all depends upon tricking him with the ability of a cunning dealer.”

Moreira prepared himself for the task. In the first place he warned the laborers to be on their guard, careful in what they should say. Instructed by their master, the men answered to the queries of the visitors with consummate cunning, so as to transform into marvels the evils of the place.

Buyers are accustomed to interrogate unexpectedly, being suspicious of the information given by the proprietors. Therefore, if this happened--and it always happened, because Moreira was the personification of the contriver of chance situations,--there occurred dialogues such as these:

“Is there much frost about here?”

“Very little, and that only in bad years.”

“Do beans grow well here?”

“Holy Mother! This very year I planted five measures and harvested fifty _alqueires_. And what beans!”

“Do the cattle have ticks?”

“Why, no! only one or another here and there. For raising, none better. No weeds or wild beans. The trouble is, the master has no strength. If he had the means this would become a fine fazenda!”

Having warned the informants, that night the preparation for receiving their guest was discussed, all happy with the renewal of their lost hopes.

“I bet that this time the thing goes!” said the vagabond son and declared that for his part he needed three _contos_ to set himself up in business.

“What kind of business?” asked the father astonished.

“A grocery store at Volta Redonda....”

“At Volta Redonda! I was already surprised at a sensible idea in this crazy head. So as to sell on credit to Tudinha’s people?”

The lad, though he didn’t blush, kept silent; he had reason to do so.

The wife wanted a house in town; for a long while she had her eye on a small dwelling on a certain street, a cheap little house suitable for a family of moderate means.

Zilda a piano ... and crates and crates of love stories....

They slept happily that night and on the following day they sent early to the village for dainties to offer to their guest--butter, cheese and biscuits. There was some hesitation over the butter.

“That’s not worth while!” objected the wife. “That will cost three _mil réis_. Far better buy me with that money a piece of unbleached cotton that I am needing so much.”

“It is necessary, my dear! Sometimes a trifle helps to get around a man and facilitates the closing up of business. Butter is grease and grease makes things slide!”

The butter won.

While she awaited the arrival of the ingredients, Dona Izaura fell to sweeping and cleaning the house and arranging the guest’s room; killed the least thin of the cockerels and a young lame sucking pig; seasoned the dough for the pasties and was rolling it out when....

“There he comes!” shouted Moreira from the window where he had posted himself since early morning, nervously scanning the high road with an old field glass; without leaving his post of observation he transmitted the details as he saw them to his more than busy wife.

“He is young ... well dressed ... Panama hat ... looks like Chico Canhambora....”

At last the man arrived; dismounted; presented his card: Pedro Trancoso de Carvalhaes Fagundes. A finer young fellow and of pleasanter speech had never landed at Espigão.

He began relating all sorts of things with the ease of a man who is as much at home in the world as in his own house in pyjamas--the journey, incidents connected with it; a marmosette he had seen hanging from a branch.

As soon as they had entered the waiting room Zico glued his ear to the keyhole, from there whispering to the women busily setting the table all he could catch of the conversation. Suddenly he squeaked to his sister with a suggestive grimace:

“He’s a bachelor, Zilda!”

The girl dropped the cutlery as though unintentionally and disappeared. Half an hour later she appeared, decked out in her best dress and with two little round red roses painted on her cheeks.

Anyone entering the oratory of the fazenda at that moment would note the absence of several petals of the red tissue paper roses that adorned the image of Saint Anthony and a little candle lighted at the feet of the image. In the country, rouge and marriages spring from the oratory....

Trancoso was delivering a dissertation upon various agricultural themes.

“The ‘_canastrão_’? Piffle!! A backward breed and very rank. My favorite is the Poland China. The Large Black is also good. But the Poland! What precocity! What a breed!”

Moreira, terribly ignorant on the subject, knowing only the famished skinny ones without name or breed, that grunted in his own pastures, unconsciously opened his mouth in astonishment.

“As far as bovine cattle is concerned,” continued Trancoso, “I think that all of them from Barreto to Prado are entirely wrong. Completely wrong, I say. There should be no selection or inter-breeding. I advise the immediate adoption of the finer breeds; the Polled Angus and the Red Lincoln. We have no pastures? We’ll make them. We’ll plant alfalfa. Make hay, ensilage. Assis confessed to me once....”

Assis! the highest authorities on agriculture confessed to that man! He was intimate with them all--Prado, Barreto, Cotrim ... and Ministers! “Now, I told Bezerra....”

Never was that house honored with a more distinguished gentleman, so well connected and so widely traveled.

He spoke of the Argentine and Chicago like someone who had just come from there. Marvelous!

Moreira’s mouth opened and had almost reached the last degree of aperture allowed by the jaws, when a woman’s voice announced breakfast.

Introductions. Zilda was the recipient of phrases never before dreamed of, which made her heart leap for joy. So were the stewed chicken, the pork and beans, the pasties and even the drinking water.

“In town, Mr. Moreira, water like this, pure as crystal, absolutely drinkable is worth the best of wines. Happy are those who can drink it!”

The family looked at each other: they never imagined that they owned such a precious thing, and each one involuntarily took a little swallow of it as though acquainting themselves with it at that moment for the first time. Zico even smacked his lips.

Dona Izaura could not contain herself with delight. The compliments to her cooking captivated the good lady; she would have considered herself well paid for the hard work with half that praise.

“Learn, Zico,” she whispered to her son, “that’s what a gentleman should be!”

After coffee, hailed with the word “delicious!” Moreira invited the young man for a turn on horseback.

“Impossible, my friend, I do not ride after meals; it gives me cephalalgy.”

Zilda blushed. Zilda always blushed when she did not understand a word.

“We will go this afternoon, I am in no hurry. Now I prefer a short walk through the orchard to aid the digestion.”

While the two men went slowly in that direction, Zilda and Zico flew for the dictionary.

“It isn’t among the S’s,” said the youth.

“Look for it with a C,” suggested the girl.

After some trouble they found the word.

“Headache! Well, I never! Just that....”

In the afternoon on the ride, Trancoso admired and praised all that he saw, to the astonishment of the planter, who, for the first time, heard his belongings praised.

Usually buyers run down everything, looking only for faults; they begin to exclaim about the dangers of loose soil as soon as they come across a crumbling bank; they find the water scarce and bad; and if they see an ox they glue their eyes on the parasites.

Not Trancoso! He only praised! As Moreira, when they passed the counterfeited places, pointed to the standards with trembling finger, the young man exclaimed in astonishment:

“_Caquéra!_ Why this is wonderful!”

At sight of the _Pau d’Alho_, his amazement reached its height:

“What I see is marvelous! I never expected to see even a vestige of such a tree in these parts,” he said slipping a leaf into his pocketbook as a souvenir.

In the house he unbosomed himself to the old lady:

“Well, madam, the quality of the soil is far beyond my expectations. Even _Pau d’Alho_! It is really astonishing!”

Dona Izaura lowered her eyes.

The scene occurred on the veranda.

Night had fallen.

A night humming with the chirp of crickets, the croaks of frogs, numberless stars in the sky and endless peace on earth.

Trancoso, stretched out on a lounging-chair, transformed the torpor of digestion into poetic lassitude.

“How charming is the chirp of the crickets! I adore starry nights, the rustic life of the country, so healthy and happy!...”

“But it is very lonely....” ventured Zilda.

“Do you think so! Do you prefer the strident song of the cicada tuning up in the bright sunshine?” said he in a mellifluous voice. “Then it must be that some shadow darkens your little heart.”

Moreira seeing that sentimentalism was coming into play and in this way liable to lead to matrimonial consequences, slapped his forehead and cried out: “The devil! If I wasn’t forgetting all about....” He fled precipitately, leaving the two alone.

The dialogue continued, all honey and roses.

“You are a poet!” exclaimed Zilda at one of his sweetest warblings.

“Who would not be, beneath the stars of the heavens and beside a star of the earth?”

“Poor me!” sighed the girl, her heart beating fast.

From Trancoso’s heart also rose a sigh. He lifted his eyes to a cloud that took the place of the Milky Way in the sky and he murmured a soliloquy strong enough to bring a girl to terms:

“Love! ... the Milky Way of Life! The perfume of roses, the veil of dawn! To love, and listen to the stars.... Love, for only he who loves can understand what they say!”

It was sour contraband wine; but to the girl’s inexperienced palate it tasted like Lachryma Christi. Zilda felt the fumes go to her head. She wanted to reciprocate. She searched the rhetorical nosegays of her mind so as to cull the most beautiful flower and found only a humble jasmine.

“What a beautiful thought for a postal-card!” she said.

They did not go beyond the jasmine; coffee and fried cakes interrupted the budding idyl.

What a night! One would say the angel of happiness had spread his golden wings over that lonely house. Zilda saw all the love tales she had ever devoured come true. Dona Izaura enjoyed the hope of marrying her off wealthy. Moreira dreamed of settling debts with a big surplus tinkling in his pockets. And Zico, transformed in his imagination into a grocer, the whole night in dreams sold on credit to Tudinha’s people, who, finally charmed by so much kindness, gave him the daughter’s much desired hand.

Only Trancoso slept the sleep of the just; dreamless and undisturbed by nightmares. How good it is to be rich!

The next day he went over the remainder of the fazenda, coffee-plantations and pastures; examined the live-stock and out-buildings; and as the amiable young man continued to be charmed, Moreira, who the night before had decided to ask forty contos for Espigão, thought it wise to raise the price. After the scene of the _Pau d’Alho_, in his mind he raised it to forty-five; after the examination of the live-stock it had already risen to sixty. And thus when the great question was broached, the old man declared courageously in the firm voice of an _alea jacta_:

“Seventy-five!” and waited standing for the storm to burst.

Trancoso, however, found the price reasonable.

“Well, it is not expensive, the price is more moderate than I expected.”

The old man bit his lips and tried to retract.

“Seventy-five, yes, but ... not including the cattle!...”

“That’s fair,” answered Trancoso.

“... also not including the pigs!”

“Exactly.”

“... and the furniture!”

“Naturally.”

The planter choked; there was nothing more to exclude; he confessed to himself that he was an ass. Why had he not said eighty right off?

The wife informed of the case, called him a fool.

“But, woman, at forty it was already a good business!”

“For eighty it would have been doubly good. Don’t excuse yourself. I never saw a Moreira who was not slow and stupid. It’s in the blood. You are not to blame.”

They sulked for a while but the eagerness to build air-castles with the unexpected pile of money swept the cloud far away.

Zico took advantage of the favorable occasion to insist upon the three contos for setting up the business and was promised them.

Dona Izaura no longer wanted the little cottage. Now she remembered a larger one on a street where processions passed--Eusebio Leite’s house.

“But that one is worth twelve contos,” warned the husband.

“But it is far better than that shanty. Very well arranged. Only I don’t like the windowless room near the pantry; it’s too dark.”

“We could put in a sky-light.”

“The yard, too, needs to be made over; instead of the chicken enclosure....”

Until far into the night, while sleep did not come, they remodeled the house, transforming it into the loveliest dwelling in town. The couple were giving the last touches, and beginning to get sleepy when Zico knocked at the door.

“Three contos are not enough, father, I need five. There are the arrangements that I had not thought of, the license and the rental and other little things....”

Between two yawns the father generously granted six.