Plantation Boy - Menino de Engenho - Chapter 39

I was twelve years old when I first knew a woman as a man. I followed her, approaching her straw hut with an anxiety which was a mixture of fear and shame. Zefa Caja was the woman all the workmen came to for a shag. She didn’t want me.

“Go away and grow up first, perverse little boy.”

But I stayed there talking with her, looking at her, wanting to do bad things.

She went with me a few times. I brought her things from the main house, pieces of meat, cheese stolen from the pantry. I brought to her the spare change my grandfather left lying about on tables. She would caress me with an animal appetite for love; she would say that I still had the taste of milk in my mouth, and she wanted to eat me like a fruit, all in one bite.

I was getting thin.

“The boy is hooked on vice!”

It was truly a vice. No sooner had I finished breakfast than I went to Zefa’s house. I went after lunch and I went after dinner. They went and told my grandfather.

“He never leaves the girl’s house!”

Old José Paulino shouted at me,

“If you weren’t going to college within the week I’d give you a good thrashing.”

But he didn’t kick up the hullaballoo I had expected. These sort of things, the old man usually overlooked. His own life had been full of irregularities of this sort. When he was angry with Uncle Juca on account of the mulata Maria Pia I heard Generosa say in the kitchen,

“Hark at him! When he was young he chased after all the black women. Seu Juca is a chip off the old block.

But I had to pay my dues to love. I caught the ‘world’s sickness’. For many days I hid away from the people of the house. They gave me remedies which I took in secret, by the river side. I applied the sugary paste out there in the open air, but I didn’t get better. I was afraid of urinating on account of the sharp pain. In the end I was found out. There was a terrible uproar.

“At that age! With the French disease!”

They locked up Zefa Caja. I was ashamed to look anyone in the eye. I was the subject of all sorts of comments and jokes. My Uncle Juca took command of my treatment. Wherever I went there were comments.

“Child of the devil!”

And I began to grow vain in my sickness. I would open my legs wide, exaggerating my walk. For me, these warts that love had left on my smooth childish body were a glory. They showed me off to visitors as an example of virility advanced for my age. The plantation owners talked filth in front of me, sharing confidences in their conversation. They asked about Zefa Caja, calling her my teacher.

“He’s just like his grandfather!”

And they had a good laugh at this twelve year old libertine.

The black boy Ricardo caught the same disease from the same source. He lay motionless in his hammock. I was afraid of ending up like him. I took all the precautions, taking the remedies obediently. My companion had paid a greater tax on his masculinity than I. He was cured with home-made recipes, bottles of roots from the woods mixed with sugar cane.

“Mine was worse than yours – a real man’s dose of the clap!”

Each of us boasted about how bad our malady was. Uncle Juca gave me no rest. He would take me to bathe and have my infection cleaned. I had to drink a vile concoction of herbal tea from morning to night, diuretics that embarrassed me no end.

“He’s wet his bed!”

Everyone sneered at me

“A real man” old José Paulino mocked when he heard about my weakness. The Negress Franca washed the bandages. She scrubbed the filthy rags sullied by my purgations down by the river.

Another month and I would be able to go to college.

This dose of the clap worked a transformation in me. I saw myself as more than just a kid; and others already looked at me differently. They no longer condescended to me like they did with children. The maids treated me like a man. The conversations didn’t stop abruptly when I walked through the door. I went down to the water’s edge to gawp at the washer women. They were almost naked as they beat the clothes on the stones. I would take a bath naked nearby, watching their body parts that were casually uncovered.

“Away with you! Young rascal!”

But they laughed, liking my curiosity.

For me, now, love was everywhere on the plantation; in the old slave quarters, by the river side, in the straw huts. The boys took me on visits to girls under the trees where each one took his turn. In the main house the men thought it amusing that I was such a libertine.

“Wayward boy! Like a pig he’s only happy in filth!”

I thought of Aunt Maria, wandering if she knew of all of this. Far away, she seemed like a figure from another world. I was something else now from the little boy she had brought up with such tenderness. Sex had put long trousers on her little Charlie. And the heart of the depraved boy only beat to the rhythm of his depravity. I had almost forgotten the sweet tenderness of my second mother. I ran through the fields like a dog on heat, rubbing up wherever I could. The tenants began to complain.

“Nobody can leave their daughters in the house with Seu Carlinhos hanging around.”

Joao Rouco chased me away on account of his little boy who I had wanted to grab.

In June I would go to college. The day of my departure was fixed.

“They’ll sort him out at college!”

They talked about college as if it were some sort of house of correction. They neglected their children, expecting the punishments dished out in the colleges to put them right. They didn’t bother with their infancy, the most dangerous years of their lives.

In June I would be going to my sanatorium. I was going to hand over to priests and teachers a soul where license had made its home. I had lost my innocence, I had lost my happiness in seeing the world as a toy there for my amusement. I looked at the world through the eyes of my desires and the impulses of my flesh.