Plantation Boy - Menini de Engenho - Chapter 40

The following day I would take the train and go to college. Uncle Juca would take me to the priests and they would have carte blanche and do with me what they wish.

I woke up to the sound of the birds singing in the trees outside. They were saying their farewells with great gusto. There in my bed I was already beginning to miss the plantation – and I hadn’t even gone yet. For a while I lay with my eyes open in the company of my thoughts. A new life was about to begin.

“College civilizes boys!”

In my case there was much that needed the attentions of the birch. The black women said I was evil inside. Aunt Sinházinha talked about my backwardness. The men laughed at my wicked wild ways.

“Bad boy! Stupid boy! Wayward boy!”

My asthma came and went without anyone noticing. It was getting better with age. I had nothing of God inside of me. I was indifferent to the punishments of heaven. I was more afraid of werewolves. My religion knew nothing of sins and penitence. Fears of hell I confused with the punishments in fairy tales. I went to bed without saying my prayers, and woke up without an Ave Maria. My statue of Saint Luis Gonzaga must have looked with repugnance upon his brother sunk in the mire.

Now the college was going to set right this soul that had grown downwards into the earth. They were going to prune the branches of this tree so its branches might grow upwards.

“When they come back from college they are never the same as before.”

Everybody believed this. This other boy I was to become would be my mother’s dream – the little Carlinhos she always wanted for a son. This thought cheered me up when I thought of my new life.

“Go and get dressed.”

My suitcase was carried to the station on Zé Guedes’ head. Later on we went on horseback. We passed alongside the cane fields, going past the homes of my grandfather’s tenants, and I felt a sad yearning for everything I knew.

“Seu Carlinhos is going to college!”

The black boys came to look at me. Uncle Juca was in front and I dragged behind, feeling in the horse’s every step longings for the plantation I was leaving behind.

At the door of Zefa Cafa, my teacher in lust, there were a few clothes laid out in the sun to dry. The door was shut, the women out in the nearby clearing, their scarves on their heads. The nine o’clock sun was drying up the earth soaked by last night’s rains. With their hoes they cleared the scrub. Footprints left their mark on the soft muddy road. We passed a boy with his bundle of maize, with the green leaves hanging on the ground. He was taking it to Generosa the cook. In such a way the plantation said its good-byes like a lover giving me her final caress.

At the station some people from Angico were waiting for the train.

“You’re going to college? About time too.”

The women said I had the look of my mother. The men talked with Uncle Juca. They knew all about my illness and asked me awkward questions.

The train had been to Itabaiana and had left Pilar. It was seen coming round the bend at Engenho Novo. Then it disappeared into the cut. The signal fell and it came into the station, pulling up to the side of the platform close to our feet.

“Sit on this side so you can see the people of the plantation.”

And the train pulled off, running through the cane fields and the cotton clearings that belonged to my grandfather. People stood in the doorways to watch it pass by. The people at Lagoa Preta stood on the porch, watching. The postman was throwing letters on the doorstep. And the train entered into a cut and emerged on an embankment that separated the pools made by the winter rains.

In the distance I could see Oiteiro’s cowshed and the wall that sheltered the cattle from the winds. The cattle were grazing close to the railway line.

“Fine animals.”

The cattle raised up their heads from the appetizing grass to watch the train go by. As it went down the Caboclo slope it peeped its whistle. There I could see Santa Rosa with its white cattle and the house surrounded by its porch. The black boys were waiting by the side of the track to watch me go by.

“Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!” They waved their hands at me.

And with my handkerchief I waved back at them. My eyes filled with tears. I missed the plantation so much it pierced my heart. And the train ran on to Entroncamento. Then came Santana, Maran on the hill, Massagana, with Colonel Trombone in the doorway.

The engine stopped to take on water. The train from Guarapira, shorter than ours, arrived. Passengers wearing their travelling clothes got off to talk to others on our train.

All these goings on chased away my longing for our fields, for my pasture. They wanted to set me right, make an educated man of me. When I was leaving José Paulino said to me.

“Don’t waste your time. Study hard, so you don’t regret it.”

I didn’t know anything. I was taking to college a boy’s body that had been shaken by the passions of a grown man, and a soul older than my body. I knew a boy, Sergio, Raul Pompeia’s son who had entered college with long hair and the soul of an angel smelling of virginity. Me, no. I knew it all. I was advanced for my years as I crossed the doorway into my college.

Lost boy. Plantation boy.