Plantation Boy - Menino de Engenho - Chapter 20

Werewolves appeared in the woods at Rolo. In the kitchen they talked of one of the damned who had returned to take hold of people and drink their blood. Manuel Severino, on returning home one evening, had been chased by the beast.

"I saw his shadow over me so I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, as fast as a maddened pony. When I looked back all I could see were the trees shaking from a mighty gust of wind.

The news of the beast did its rounds. Some people reckoned that José Cutia had been bewitched again.

José Cutia was a man who came from Paraíba to buy eggs, a poor man who had scarcely a drop of blood in his cheeks. He always went about at night, it often being easier for him to make his journeys without the heat of the sun. For this habit of his, popular wisdom pointed the finger at him.

"He wants to bring colour to his cheeks by drinking other folk's blood."

There were even people who had seen José Cutia disappearing under bushes and being transformed into the beast. His finger nails grew into enormous blades, his feet turned into goat's hooves and his hair was transformed into a horse's mane. They said that, at the moment he was bewitched, the man groaned like a pig about to be slaughtered. He did not want to do what he did, but he could not live without blood. And against his own wishes, he turned into a werewolf.

People were not angry with him: if anything, they felt pity. Because it was certain that José Cutia was sent out at night by a power that was not his own. But us boys, when we saw him pass by with his baskets of eggs, we ran as fast as our legs could carry us, out of fear.  

They said that he ate little boys' kidneys and that he bathed in the blood of little babies.

All the stories began to take on a life of their own.

Padre Ramalho met the werewolf in the forest. The priest was on the way to give extreme unction to a sick man in Caldeiros when he saw something pulling on his horse's tail. He hit it with his whip, dug in his spurs, and nothing happened. The horse's hooves were stuck fast in the mud. He looked back and saw the beast about to jump on top of him. He took from his pocket the box containing the consecrated body of Christ and pointed it at the beast. He heard the thud of a body falling, and a prolonged groan like that of a dying man. The horse's feet were released and the horse flew off like the wind. The next day they found José Curtia collapsed in the road.

And the werewolf drank the blood of animals too, sucking the blood from their necks. My grandfather's pony was found one morning with its neck cut and bleeding. The werewolf had been roaming the stables at night.

I believed all these stories and many a night I went to bed with a fear of these creatures from hell. My terror of the unknown grew as I imagined yellow faced men roaming the woods eating the flesh of kidneys of small children. And even when I was much older and at college, when walking through the dark corners of the wood, where the werewolves lie in wait, I would whistle or sing out loud to chase away the fear.

There were zombies on the plantation too. The oxen that died were not buried but dragged away to the animal cemetery underneath the trees by the river side, for food for the vultures. From a distance you could smell the stench of rotting flesh, and you could see the birds fighting over strips of flesh and tripe. The zombie, which was the soul of the dead animal, remained to roam the earth. It did not have the evil power of the werewolf.  It did not drink blood, nor did it hit you like the goblins. It would appear in the form of an ox or a pig and it would run in front of people, and when they tried to grab hold of it, it would vanish into thin air.

Fausto, the old mechanic, was once going to Paciencia, when he noticed a pig grunting. All the way the pig was following him like a puppy dog. Eventually, losing patience, he lashed out at it with his stick, striking at the pig with all his strength, but the pig had vanished and all Fausto managed to hit was a log.

They told all these stories in great detail, and I believed every word. Out of these fantasies I created a real world. The werewolf existed; he was real flesh and blood; he drank blood. I believed in the werewolf with more conviction than I believed in God. He lived close to people, in Rolo Wood, with his nails like sharp and pointed spikes and his goat's feet! God only made the world. He was far away from our fears, and we never saw him like we saw José Cutia and his basket of eggs. They painted a picture of the werewolf so vividly, so of this earth, that it was as if I had seen him myself. Of God I only had a vague idea of his person. He was a good man, with a heaven for the just, and a hell for bad people like Sinhàzinha, full of cooking pots with boiling water and fiery roasting spits. But all this was after you died. The werewolf fought, body against body, against living people. All you had to do to meet him was to go down to Rolo Wood.

They lulled us to sleep with these stories of devil's hooves, zombie donkeys, phantoms of the undead clinking the chains on their feet, howling outside distant doors. My mind was inhabited by a whole world of demons and goblins.

What they told us about God was not of this earth, it was in the air, in heaven, something to do with the beginning of the world. It's true that the sufferings of Jesus Christ touched us deeply during Holy Week. But for us Jesus Christ was different to God. God was the man with the beard and whiskers, Jesus was a boy. God had never been born, Jesus had a mother, learnt to read, heard people arguing, had grown up like all of us.

We did not understand the mysteries of the Holy Trinity. Only in later years did the catechism destroy my absolute faith in the malevolent creatures of the night. Yet, for all that, even as a grown man, they never completely vanished from my mind.