The mill was grinding when the sound of blows
came from near the furnace. Two of the workmen were fighting, one with a small
machete, the other with a sharp knife; Mane Silvino and the Negro José Gonçalo.
The man with the knife was advancing on the one with the machete, which kept on
grazing the head of the other man.
Everyone came to see the fight. The two men
ignored the shouts of old José Paulino.
“Let them kill each other!”
Soon they were in the distillery, grappling
like dogs in a to and fro of blows. Then Gonçalo yelled out loud and fell to
the ground with his hand clutching his stomach. Mane Silvino was off like a
shot towards the fence.
“Grab that man! Grab him!”
People ran after the murderer. Master Fausto
threw a brick at him and he fell in a heap on top of the wire fence.
Straightaway he was tied up with a rope. And
the other man, with the fatal knife wounds, was laid out. He was asking for
water, looking at everyone with dying eyes. He didn’t even groan.
“Water! Give me water!” he said with a hoarse
voice, like that of a consumptive, drawling like a drunkard.
“Take the man to the infirmary!”
But when they took hold of him his arms
flopped. He was near the end.
“He’s a good peaceable lad,” they said about
the victim.
Later on his wife and children arrived with
their plaintive wailing, high and piercing. There were five little children,
one still suckling.
They laid the dead man in a hammock. The family
followed behind, filling the pleasant rural tranquility with the lamentations
of a funeral song.
The other man was in the distillery, captured.
“Help me Nossa Senhora! Help me Our Lady!”
And the whip tore into his back, swish, swish!
And his cries for mercy!
“Go tell Seu Juca that I don’t want this here.
Send the man into town. Hand him over to the justice! There they can do what
they want with him. Here no! These blows won’t do any good.”
The man’s head was all cut, dripping blood. His
shirt was soaked in blood and his arms were bound. He didn’t look at anyone.
“Accursed devil!”
“He insulted me, Colonel, Sir.”
When he left for Pilar, it was with a crowd
following on behind. Many were now on his side.
The wife and children of the victim were crying
too, asking for the protection of the master of the plantation.
The floorboards where the dead man had been
laid out were covered in blood. Next day they scrubbed and scrubbed, but the
stain remained. Human blood does not go away. Whenever we were in the mill we
stepped over the bloodstains, out of fear. The word spread that so long as the
stain refused to disappear the dead man would appear there. Some people wanted
him laid to rest with a stake through his heart. And the visions began to
appear. Some had found the mill grinding the sugar all on its own. Others had
seen ox-carts moving on their own accord. They had seen him cutting cane. These
stories reached the kitchen where they were taken as gospel. His presence
walked from one side of the river to the other. And every day someone related
their cheap dream. Nobody bothered with werewolves anymore. It was souls from
the other world who now controlled the fear of the people of Santa-Rosa.
No comments:
Post a Comment