They were clearing the part of the meadow nearest
the Mill. From the house we could see the heads, covered with straw hats, going
up and down to the rhythm of the spade. There were some eighty men commanded by
the overseer José Felismino, who, with club in hand, watched over their labour.
They laboured from dawn, at about six o’clock, till night fall. Sometimes I
went along with them, amused by their conversation. They talked while they
worked, full of banter, the youngest ones boasting about women.
Some worked silently, concentrating on their
work. Others turned over the soil while telling stories and chatting away.
“Enough of the conversation!” José Felismino
would shout.
“Let’s be getting on with the work. The colonel
will be here soon.”
The spades rang out on the hard earth, and they
spread with their feet the soil that they dug up. The sun beat down on their
naked backs, sweat running down their bodies.
Manuel Riachão was the first in line, a team
leader. He was more agile than most. His head shrunk into his shoulders as his
spade pounded the ground relentlessly and mechanically, always faster than his
workmates. Zé Passarinho was the slowest. No amount of shouting could spur on
this lazy drunkard. They only paid him two cruzados, the same as the cotton
pickers.
“Pull your finger out, you lazy rascal!” But
still he dawdled, his feet swollen and his body aching.
The men would stop at ten o’clock for a lunch
of flour and dried fish. They would eat out of a pan, licking their lips as if
it were a banquet. Then they would lie down in the shade, stretching out to
rest for fifteen minutes.
Some of the wives brought their men food
wrapped in a dirty cloths - cold meat and farofa. Then they would set to work
again, till six in the evening.
My grandfather would come and visit the
‘rabble’ doing their forced labour.
“What’s going on here, Mr. José Felismino?” he
would ask the overseer. “Eighty men! More like eighty women!”
They ignored the old man’s shouts. It was the
same every day, whether they did a lot or did a little. Colonel José Paulino
was all bark. He would call them names, haranguing them like they were
criminals, but they all received their due when it was time to pay them.
Skinny little dogs would accompany their
masters to the site of their labour. They would run about the plum trees
chasing the birds away. These dogs never came into the yard at the main house.
Our fat dogs never gave any quarter to their poor unhappy brothers.
João Rouco came with his three sons to the
fields. His wife and little ones stayed at home in their clearing. At seventy
years of age he put in as much work as his youngest son. His mouth was already
toothless, but his arms were strong and his legs hard. My grandfather never
shouted at him. He wasn’t subservient, like the others. If my grandfather
yelled at him he would yell back. They were the same age and they had played
together as children,
“Wretched rascal!” my grandfather would shout, but
when he needed someone good and reliable for a difficult piece of work he would
call on João Rouco.
Old Pinheiro, on the other hand was worthless.
He was a thief and an intriguer. And his sons were the same. When they came to
work in the fields they spent their time complaining about their aches and
pains. They were only given light tasks. When the overseer shouted at them they
just stared back blankly.
Old Pinheiro’s neighbour didn’t breed chickens
because the old man was as bad as a hungry fox. Neither workmates nor
neighbours reckoned much to him.
On the other hand, everybody respected João
Rouco, calling him Mr.João. Nobody ever messed him about. All of us, the
children of the main house, the kitchen maids, the plantation boys, thought
well of him.
In times of necessity the tenants and the
farmers came to help the master of the plantation. At such times, more than two
hundred spades were working the soil. The farmers and the tenants, the petit
bourgeoisie of the plantation, would lower themselves to work alongside the
plebs. They received no money for the day’s labour that they gave. They did not
want to share the indignity of a field worker so they worked for free. For us
children it was a great show when there was such a gathering as this. We took
sugar sticks to give to the men for a snack. At night the yard of the great
house was crowded with an army of ragged workers. When it rained they would
drink cachaça and then they would return home for their miserable sleep on a
bed of sticks.
Seeing these degraded people every day got me
used to their misfortune. Never, as a child, did I feel sorry for them. I
thought it natural they should live and sleep in a hovel, eating little and
working like beasts of burden. My understanding of life made me see in this a
work of God. They were born to live like that because it was the will of God,
because God wanted us to be white and to rule over them, like we also ruled
over the oxen, the donkeys, the forest.
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