Plantation Boy - Menino de Engenho - Chapter 15

Another of my teachers was Zé Guedes. He was my master in Mischief. He took me to school and brought me back every day. In the half hour journey each way I learnt from him many other things than my letters and my tables. He would tell me all about his love life, and stories about other people's love lives too.

"That's where Zefa Cajá lives."

And then he would give me all the details of how that woman had strayed from the straight and narrow. Sometimes he would stop at her door and a long conversation ensued between the two of them, full of choice words.

"Have you no shame, Zé Guedes?" she would say, "talking like that in front of the child."

But Zé Guedes was not bothered by my presence. And I liked to hear them talk dirty. On the way back his lessons would continue, talking about women and telling me about the diseases you could catch; the pox, the clap and so on.

Sometimes women would stop him on the road and ask him to get things from town for them; cloth, needles and such like. We made many a detour to hand over what he had brought them, and Zé Guedes would stop and chat for a long while, particularly with the coloured women.

"That one there, she's in the past now as far as I'm concerned. She's Dr. Juca's piece now."

And so it was that I learnt that my Uncle Juca had a few coloured women he could call on.

One time we called at a straw hut where a black woman lived. Zê stayed in a long time. When he came out, I heard the woman say: "Don't forget the cotton you promised me, you rascal!"

Such were my lessons in filth, and he didn't content himself with just the theory either.

Indeed, we had, in the sheds attached to the main house, a public schoolroom of love. Zé Guedes told us how it was with women, like it was with the bulls and the cows. Watching the cattle was a good practical demonstration. This was how a plantation boy learnt about love, anticipating his knowledge of love by a good few years. The reproductive act held no mystery at all for us. We saw the cows and the sows suffer in their labour pains.

I remember one poor cow dying on account of my cousin Silvino. He decided to play doctor but his ineptitude finished off my grandfather's prize Frisian cow. I, of course, said nothing.

We were fascinated by the sexual activities of the cattle and the pigs. We had our own favourite she-goats and cows for experiments in lubrication. The savage promiscuity of the farmyard led us to try to experience pleasures that we were not old enough to enjoy. It was only a country boy's childish curiosity, the same kind of curiosity that led us to look at what was inside a toy.

One evening cousin Silvino said to me, "Today we're going to get dirty in the shed!"

At nightfall, when the cattle had come in from the pasture, and were resting, some lying down, others looking down at the ground, Silvino climbed on the fence, looking to climb on top of a gentle cow. We all stood watching from a distance, silent, watching with greedy eyes, like accomplices of a crime.

Then we heard a voice call out:

"Get out of there, you shameless boy! Just wait till I tell the Colonel!"