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 cowlick 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 reis the arroba;[1] 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 most 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 Espigao.
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 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 'canastrao'? 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 with out 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 Раu 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 vail 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.
And Zilda? She floated along on the high seas of a fairy tale.
Let her float on.
Finally the day arrived for the amiable buyer to leave. Trancoso bid goodbye. He was sorry that he could not extend the delightful stay, but important affairs called him back. A rich man's life is not as easy as it seems … As to the business, it was all but closed; he would give a definite answer within the week.
Trancoso left carrying a parcel of eggs,—he had highly appreciated a breed of chickens raised there; and a little bag of yams,—a dainty of which he was very fond.
He also took with him a fine present Moreira's sorrel, the best horse, on the farm. He had praised the animal so much during his rides that the planter bad been obliged to refuse an exchange proposed and make him a present of it.
"Just see!" said Moreira, voicing the general opinion. "Young, very rich, straight as can be, learned as a doctor and, nevertheless, amiable, polite, incapable of turning up his nose at things like the idiots who have come here. That's a gentleman for you!"
The old lady was specially pleased at the young man's lack of ceremony. To take away eggs and yams! How nice of him!
They all agreed with her, each one praising him in his or her way. And thus, even absent, the amiable and wealthy youth was the talk of the household during the entire week.
The week passed, however, without the arrival of the much desired answer. And still another, and yet another. Moreira wrote him, already apprehensive; no answer. He remembered a friend who lived in the same town and sent him a letter asking him to obtain a definite decision from the capitalist. Regarding the price, he would lower it somewhat. Не would sell the fazenda for fifty-five, fifty, or even forty, including live-stock and furniture.
His friend answered without delay. Upon opening the envelope the four hearts of the Espigão fazenda beat violently: that paper held the destiny of all four.
The letter read as follows: "Dear Moreira: Either I am very much mistaken or you are laboring under an illusion. There is no wealthy Trancoso Carvalhaes about here. There is little Trancoso, son of Nhá Béva, commonly called Rag-Picker. He is a swindler and lives off crooked deals and knows how to fool those who are not acquainted with him. Latterly he has travelled over the State of Minas, from fazenda to fazenda under divers pretexts. Sometimes he pretends to be a buyer and spends a week in the planter's house, boring him with rides through the plantations and inspections of boundaries; eats and drinks of the best that's to be had; flirts with the servant-girls or the daughter of the house or anyone he comes across, and at the best stage of the game, beats it. He has done this a hundred times, always choosing another neighbourhood. The rascal likes to change his diet! As the only Trancoso here is this one I shall not present your proposal to the rogue. Think of the Rag-Picker buying a farm! …"
Moreira dropped into a chair stupefied, with the letter on his knee. Then the blood rose to his face and his eyes flashed.
The hope of the household fell with crash, accompanied by the girl's tears, the old lady's anger and the rage of the men. Zico proposed leaving immediately on the track of the bandit, so as to smash his face for him.
"Let it be, boy. The world rolls on. Some day I will run across him and square accounts with this thief."
Poor castles! There is nothing sadder than the sudden tumbling down of illusions. The beautiful castles in Spain erected during a month with the wonderful pile of money turned into dingy ruins. Dona Izaura bewailed her cakes, her butter and chickens. As for Zilda, the disaster had the effect of an icy blast across a tender flower in bloom. She took to her bed in a fever. Her face became hollow. All the tragic episodes in the novels she had read fled through her memory; she saw in herself the victim of them all. And for days contemplated suicide. Finally she became used to the idea and continued to live. Thus she verified the fact that folks die of love only in fiction. …
The story ends here—for the audience; for the gallery it still goes on a bit. The audience is accustomed to simulate some fine habits of good taste and tone, which are very laughable; it enters the theatre after the play has begun, and leaves when the epilogue has hardly commenced. Now the galleries want the whole thing so as to have their full money's worth to the last penny. In the novels and stories they ask insistently for all the details of the plot and if the author, led by the teaching of his school, presents them with the half finished sentence which he calls the impressionable note, at the most exciting point, they turn up their noses. They want to know and they are perfectly right, if So-and-so died, if the girl married happily, if the man finally sold the fazenda. To whom and for how much.
Healthy, human and highly respectable curiosity!
"Did poor Moreira sell the fazenda?"
I am sorry to say that he did not! And he did not sell it due to the most unconceivable of all the misunderstandings invented in the world by the devil,—yes, because besides the devil, who would be capable of tangling up the threads of the skein with such loops and knots just when the piece of crochet is about to be finished?
Chance conferred upon Trancoso fifty contos in the lottery. Don't laugh. Why wouldn't Trancoso be the chosen one if chance is blind and he had the ticket in his pocket? He won the fifty contos which to a poor beggar of that sort signified great wealth.
Once in possession of the pile of money, after weeks of dizziness he decided to buy a fazenda. He wanted to stop up people's mouths doing something that had never entered his head: buy a plantation.
He passed in review all those that he had visited during the vagabond years, leaning finally towards the Espigão fazenda. Contributing to this were the memory of the girl, the old lady's cakes and the idea of giving over the administration of the fazenda to his father-in-law in such a way as to leave him free to loaf, gently basking in Zilda's love and the culinary perfections of his mother-in-law.
Therefore he wrote to Moreira announcing his return in order to close the deal.
Alas! when said letter reached the Espigão fazenda there were roars of anger mingled with howls of vengeance.
"Now's our chance!" said the old man. "The rascal liked the fun and wants to repeat the dose; but this time I'll fix you, see if I don't!" he ended rubbing his hands together in anticipation of revenge.
In pale Zilda's sinking heart, however, there flashed a ray of hope. The sombre night of her soul was lighted up by the moon-beam of a "who knows?” However, she did not dare to face her father's and brother's anger, for both had agreed upon a tremendous settling of accounts. She pinned her faith on a miracle and lit another little candle to Saint Anthony. …
The great day arrived. Trancoso entered the fazenda dancing up on the sorrel. Moreira went down to meet him below with his hands behind his back. Even before reining up his horse, the amiable rogue had already begun to exclaim:
"How do you do, my dear Moreira! At last the great day has arrived. This time I've come to buy the fazenda."
Moreira shook. He waited until the scoundrel had dismounted and hardly had Trancoso thrown aside the reins and turned towards him with open arms, all smiles, when the old man drew a whip from under his coat and belaboured him with the fury of a wild boar.
"You want a plantation, you great scoundrel! Take that and that, you thief!" and slash, slash, the whip fell in strong and angry strokes.
The poor fellow, dazed by the unexpected attack, fled to the horse and mounted blindly, while Zico, the aggrieved all-but-brother-in-law, fell upon him with another shower of whaling across his back.
Dona Izaura set the dogs on him:
“Catch him, Brinquinho! Hold tight, Joli!"
The unfortunate plantation-buyer, pursued like a fox on a run, spurred his horse and flew, followed by a hail of insults and stones. As he passed out of the gate he still managed to hear in the midst of the yelling, the insults of the old woman:
“You cake eater! You butter swallower! Take that, and you'll never try it again, you robber of eggs and yams!"
And Zilda?
Back of the window-pane, her eyes swollen from crying, the sorrowful girl saw disappear forever, wrapped in a cloud of dust, the gentle knight of her golden dreams.
Unlucky Moreira thus lost on that day, the only chance Fortune had given him in his life to make a profitable deal: getting rid at a single stroke of his daughter and the Espigão fazenda. …
- ↑ I. e. About 25 cents per 32 pounds.