Good Friday On The Plantation

This is a short passage from the novel, Menino de Engenho, Plantation Boy, by Jose Lins Do Rego. It is set on a sugar plantation in the North East of Brazil around a hundred years ago, twenty or so years after the abolition of slavery.

'On Good Friday we only had one meal on the plantation. Fresh fish came from the city and relatives from other plantations came to visit; we ate much more than on other days. The maids in the kitchen would speak of Jesus's suffering from the heart and said that if the priest forgot to say the Hallelujah at the Saturday mass then the world would end once and for all.
The tenants came to the main house in large groups to ask for food, as was the tradition. They were given dried cod and flour. With their wives and their children they would leave, weighed down by sacks of food, as if they were walking one of the Stations of the Cross.
The whole day was sad. The train did not run on the railway line.
Sometimes an old lady called Totinha would visit the plantation at this time of year. She knew the story of the Life, Passion and Death of Jesus Christ in verse, and with her sad tale she would reduce us to tears.
Old Sinhazinha would say that Holy Week at Itambe was how it should be done. Padre Julio would kiss the feet of the poor and lead the procession through the streets. In church he would give a heart rending sermon while the congregation cried.
The maids stayed in the kitchen talking in whispers. No one bathed in the river, not wanting to appear naked on that day. The animals were not worked and no one insulted anyone or called each other names.
They made me release a canary that I had caught.
In our conversations we mulled over and corrected the Will of God. We decided that Jesus Christ should have liquidated all the Jews and taken over Jerusalem. The greatness of his sacrifice was lost on us. We wanted a material victory over his executioners.
For Holy Week the plantation's little chapel of the saints was open. The sanctuary was bedecked in black and the pictures of the saints were turned to face the wall. The saints were ashamed to look at the world.'