From time to time old Totonha visited the
plantation. It was a big event for us children. She earned her living by
telling stories. Small and shrivelled, so light that you feared a gust of wind
might carry her away, she walked mile after mile from plantation to plantation,
like a walking talking version of A Thousand and One Nights. She had a great
talent for telling a tale, being able to place herself in the shoes of each and
every character. And all without a single tooth in her mouth!
I was all ears when she spoke. Totonha liked to
choose her audience. She did not care for my cousin Silvino, because he would
start chattering in the middle of a story. I listened attentively, quiet and
still.
For a listener such as me Totonha would be
tireless, telling the story again, telling other stories, changing and
embellishing, always smiling like a kindly grandmother that you might see in a
picture book.
She made the stories her own. Nobody could tell
them like she could. You always felt that Totonha had been there in person, and
the kings and queens she spoke of seemed human, like people we might know. Her
version of Little Thumb was special. The grandmother who fattened up the
children to eat them was more cruel and the story more frightening than any of
the others.
She was a great artist when it came to
dramatizing a story. Her voice rose and fell without forcing the words, moving
her arms to stress each situation.
She had a prodigious memory. Entire stories she
told in verse, interrupted now and again with prose, like footnotes giving an
explanation.
There was the story of the man condemned to
death. The bells were already tolling for the poor man as he walked to the
scaffold. He had been accused of murder, and all the signs were against him.
When he and the guards passed by his door, his wife bathed in tears, the baby
at her breast took the teat out of his mouth and began to speak in verse,
revealing the truth and saving his father who was about to die an innocent man.
These verses spoken by the baby in the story were declaimed by Totonha in such
a tone of heart rending pain that it sent shivers down your spine. Tears filled
my eyes as my ears were filled with the child's sad lament.
Her stories were full of kings and queens,
soothsayers and the hangman's rope. A great deal of real life was to be found
in these heroes and schemers. The wicked were always punished with a horrible
death.
Totonha liked to add a little local colour to
her stories. When she described a magic kingdom it sounded a lot like a magical
plantation. The rivers and the forests sounded much like the Paraíba and Rolo Wood.
Her Bluebeard was identical to a certain plantation owner in Pernambuco.
The story of the wicked stepmother who buried
her daughter was Totonha's masterpiece. The father had gone on a long journey
leaving his daughter, who he loved more than the whole world, with his second
wife. She was a girl with fair hair and as pretty as a princess. The stepmother
hated her, consumed with jealousy of the love her husband had for the girl. She
began to mistreat the girl. The girl was made to carry the water from the river
with a jar placed on her head, she had to look after the pigs and to sweep the
house thoroughly. She didn't even have time to play with her dolls. She looked
worse than any servant with her unkempt hair and her dirty clothes. One day the
stepmother ordered her to stand under a fig tree with a stick in her hands to
frighten away the thrushes from the fruit. The girl spent the whole day long
swatting the hungry birds. The 'washer doves', those that wash the clothes of
Our Lord, came to speak to her, telling her stories of heaven. One day she
looked out on the beautiful world and at the blue sky and she heard the doves
singing for her. In the shade of the fig tree, in the drowsy mid-day heat she
dozed off, dreaming of her father and the toys he would bring her. And the
thrushes took their chance and stripped the tree bare of its fruit.
It was just what the wicked stepmother wanted.
She grabbed hold of the girl, gave her a blow that would kill an ox, and buried
her, still alive, on the river bank.
On his return the father broke down and wept on
hearing the news of the death of his daughter. The stepmother said that the
girl had sickened from the day he left.
"There was nothing I could do, no remedy
that would save the poor girl."
But one day the grass cutter from the
plantation went down to the river bank to cut grass for the horses. Right in
the middle was a large clump of bright green grass. He took his scythe to it. But
from the middle of it he thought that he heard a distant voice. He thought he
must be hearing things so he set to work again. But again he heard a voice,
like that of a soul in distress which said;
'Grass cutter of my father
Don't cut the hair
Combed by my mother
My stepmother buried me here
Under the figs of the fig tree
That the birds carried away.'
The astonished grass cutter ran to call his
master. And they came running back with their spades and began to dig the
earth. The girl was as green as a leaf. Her hair still growing, turned into
grass. Her eyes were full of soil, her nails long and black. The master of the
plantation cried like a crazy man, hugging and kissing his daughter. On the
plantation there was a feast that lasted for many days. The blacks danced the
'coco' for two whole weeks. Many slaves were given their freedom. And they tied
up the stepmother by her legs between two strong horses. Her remains were left
to rot in the road.
Totonha also told us stories about Jesus Christ
and his travels with his apostles. In one story Jesus arrived at a farm to
sleep the night there with his companions. The owners were desperately poor.
They didn't have so much as a crumb to give the guests. Jesus sent Peter to
fetch the bag with the provisions.
"Master," Peter said, "the bag
is empty."
"Man of little faith, go and look
again."
Peter knew that when he had put the bag down
there was nothing in it. But when he looked he found flour and meat.
In these stories Saint Peter was a man who only
believed in what his eyes saw, and he was constantly being rebuked by Our Lord.
Totonha knew a poem about the shipwreck of the
'Baía' off the coast of
Pernambuco. A survivor was telling the story of what she saw of the disaster.
'Oh, day of judgment!
Oh, day of horror!
Only the stones don't weep
Because they feel no pain....
Oh, sailors and masters,
Pilots and captains,
See our precious Baía
Sinking, sinking away.'
Each and every detail was recounted in these
verses: children wailing, holding onto their mothers for dear life; the cry of
people dying, water entering the ship; an old lady in the water holding on to a
hen cage, a rich man called Pataca-Lisa, running back to his cabin to fetch a
bag of money, and never returning: he went to the bottom with his money. The
whole poem was a wealth of detail. And with Totonha's quivering voice we felt
we were as good as at the scene of the tragedy.
The gloomy tale gave me the shivers. I was
certain that I would be too afraid ever to set foot on a boat, such was my
horror at the shipwreck of the poor Baía. After she left
our plantation Miss Totonha left for other plantations, and I awaited her
return with eagerness, looking forward to hearing more new stories. The old
woman possessed a genius that never aged.
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