Later on the provisions which we had left behind in our hurry were sent
on to us. And Aunt Maria distributed the meat and the rice that was brought to
us amongst everyone there. The other families seemed resigned, if not happy,
with their fate. The flood had ruined their fields of cassava, leaving them
with almost nothing. But they did not raise their hands to curse or to rebel
against their lot. They were as mild as lambkins.
"What is important is good health and the Lord's protection,"
they kept on saying. Poor wretches! With what health and with which God were
they counting on!
The next morning a messenger came to call us. The river had gone back to
the riverbed. The oxen were harnessed to the cart once more and we set off to
the plain. From up there we could see the great blanket of muddy waters that
flowed down below. The plain was still covered in water as far as the eye could
see. The water had been trapped on the wrong side of the dykes that had been
dug to keep it out. The dykes would have to be breached with spades before the
water could run down to the river.
We children enjoyed looking for the debris that the flood had left
behind. It gave us a certain pleasure, a certain pride, to find signs of
destruction even on our own plantation.
On the way back, the man who come to fetch us told us of how they had
found Salvador's body.
"Zé Guedes saw
something yellow floating. He thought it was an antelope. He stuck out an oar
and found that it was Salvador's head covered in mud. He'd been drowned for
three days. The vultures were circling overhead."
Then we saw the state of the cane fields. It was like an almighty hail
storm had fallen on it: everything was the colour of red mud.
"The colonel won't have a crop this year," the driver said,
"just enough to seed next year's crop."
Everywhere, the earth had turned the colour of gold coins, covered with
the slime that would produce some fine crops in the future.
My grandfather was waiting for us in the yard. When we arrived he began
to ask us about what we had seen.
"The flood destroyed more than in '75," he said, "Captain
Juca has even lost his seed. The railway line was ripped up a kilometre from
Engenho Novo. In Espírito Santo houses
fell in the street. There is a lot of suffering amongst the people. And hunger
too. The government is sending provisions."
There was a sombre mood in the house. For three days no one had slept,
meals had been eaten in a hurry, with the constant fear of the flood.
The sugar mill and the flour mill were full of wretched refugees. They
were the squatters who eeked out a living on the river bank who would be dead
from hunger, if it were not for the dried cod and the flour of the plantation.
They talked about the flood and stories of rescue, finding humour even in their
dangerous predicament. João do Umbelino lied
like crazy, embellishing his stories with visions of ragged people, children
wailing and yelling, women with shrivelled breasts, and men who had been almost
given up on. No one paid him any heed.
But they were a people with canine devotion who could be relied upon in
the hard work to come.
Then we went to see close up what the river had done. Destruction was
everywhere; the stables, the fences, the fields, the furnace. The fields were a
quagmire. Everywhere was the smell of mud. The branches of the trees were all
hanging on one side, as if they had been twisted by a gale. The plantation was
in a sorrowful state. Only the canoeists were happy, doing good business, ferrying
people from one place to another - and those with liquor stills, who could
reach Pernambuco more easily to sell their brandy. And for us it was quite a
sight - the canoes full of people and goods, the horses pulled along by ropes,
swimming behind, the obscenities that people shouted.
But otherwise it was very sad, and mud just everywhere.
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