My grandfather always took me with him on his tours of inspection around
the plantation. He liked to see what his tenants were getting up to, and play
the role of lord of his lands. Old José Paulino
liked to inspect each and every corner, to go into his woods, to take a look at
his springs, to know the needs of his people, to shout his instructions, to
hear complaints and lay down his law. We travelled many kilometres on these
visits of the patriarch. He would stop at each and every door, tapping at the
shutters with his stick. It was always a woman who would answer, a woman with a
face that spoke of misery: the poor woman who gave birth to her many children
on a straw bed, and who nourished them for years on end with milk from her
sagging breasts. They always said of their husbands: 'He's out getting wood,'
'He's ill,' 'He's gone to buy gas,'
Others would complain about sickness in the house, the children with
fever, the father confined to bed.
One woman, when my grandfather wanted to know why her husband had not
turned up for work in the fields, came up with excuses,
"He wakes up some days with rheumatism."
Then my grandfather yelled,
"Turf them out, the rogues! He owes me four days labour, but he's
been working at Engenho Novo. They think I don't know! Set fire to the
house!"
"It's not true Colonel! My husband can't even walk. He's even taken
the potato purge. People are spreading lies, Colonel! Santa Luzia strike me
blind if I'm making it up."
The children stood with their swollen bellies, the youngest playing with
a stick in the mud as if he were playing with sand on a beach.
"We're dying of hunger. God knows, if only my husband were
better!"
"Tell him that a week from now we begin cutting the cane."
Sure enough a week later the man was there, machete in hand, strong and
healthy.
"I've already told your wife that I'm sending you off the
plantation. Instead of working you go off wandering and wasting time. I don't
want layabouts on my lands."
It was the same conversation every time. Eventually, my grandfather
would relent and for a week everything would be fine. Then the man would be off
sick again, with aches and pains all over his body.
Other times, on our tours, we would knock on a door and no one would
answer. One such family we found further on at work in the fields: the man, his
wife, and their children. And he came up, cap in hand, asking for instructions.
This man rented his land. He was not obliged to work his three days in the cane
fields. He paid his rent and he was free of labour duties. The clearing where
he grew his cotton and beans allowed him this half liberty. My grandfather
would ask him about what was going on in the neighbourhood, if anyone was
taking cotton or firewood off the plantation to sell.
"Not that I know of Colonel."
"Then keep a look out for me,"
"Yes, Colonel."
And after we moved on, my grandfather said to me, "He's a good man,
he’s never caused me any problems."
In one straw house there was a white woman, her face so pale as to seem
bloodless, with a small child curled up like a cat on the warm earth in the
yard, and another clutching her breast; this was Chico Baixinho's wife. She had
given birth a week ago and her husband was nowhere to be found.
"Nobody knows where he is, Colonel. He's a waste of space. He left
me in bed with my belly about to burst, and off he went. If it weren't for the
people here I would have died of starvation."
My grandfather told her to go and get some dried cod from the mill.
At another house they were all struck down with the shivering fever.
They had come back from the leas at Goiana yellow and swollen with malaria.
"Send the boy to the mill for some quinine. You leave here healthy and
come back in this state. Don’t go to Goiana again!"
Such were his journeys my grandfather undertook when he went to survey
all he owned, every corner, every tree, so it seemed.
Nobody touched any of his timber, nobody would dare. They might rob the
cassava in the ground, but they would never mess with the trees in his woods.
He himself, when he needed work to be done, would buy wood from other
plantations. His trees grew safe from the attentions of the axe and the saw.
But once, on one of our journeys, I saw him furious as never before. We were
riding down a track in the great forest when we heard the sound of the swishing
of an axe.
"Who gave you the order to cut down this tree?"
"It was Mr. Juca." Firmino the carpenter replied more dead
than alive.
"Damn it all! But you know perfectly well that I don't want any
woodcutting here!"
And he turned back to the house without saying another word, without
stopping anywhere else.
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