Plantation Boy - Menino de Engenho - Chapter 37

Aunt Sinházinha beckoned me to stand next to her, and she placed a hand on my head, caressing me. It was the first time the old woman had shown any tenderness.

“Next month you’ll be going to college.”

Since Aunt Maria had left they had been talking about sending me away to school.

“He won’t miss us much because he’s ready for school.”

They got my stuff together, making me some men’s shirts and long trousers. I had a new suitcase full of linen and clothes ready for boarding school. I tried to suppress my tears thinking of the time to come at college. But I wasn’t afraid of going there. On the contrary, I began to look forward to the day of my departure. My cousins had gone away and it was raining every day. The rainy days left me a prisoner of my thoughts.

The rainfall beat down on the plum trees, a constant noise from the woods, rumbling from afar like a runaway train.

“Get the beans out of the ground! Cover the sugar!”

The boys ran around the yard that was covered with half dried leaves. The rain was pelting down on the ground, pouring down night and day without stop.

The first rains of the year set off a party on the plantation. The weather brought heavy black clouds and a fearful heat.

“We’re in for a lot of water!”

My grandfather stood on the porch examining the sky. He walked through the rows of plants beating the with his juca stick. It was a great joy of his, beating the soft ground, examining the yellow leaves that would soon turn green.

At the first sign of winter the men would leave off their work in the fields and head off to the distillery to take a drop. They shouted out their happiness with wild yelps like animals.

But these were only the first rains. Soon the rain was everyone, at least twelve hours a day. On the roads the carters huddled under their capes while the horses trudged on. Splish, splosh, splash, went their hooves in the water. The tenants would arrive with their trousers soaked to ask for cotton seeds for their clearings. And the rain fell without cease.

I stood watching the streams that poured down from the heights and the water coursing down the road that was now a river. All was dark in the house, like in the middle of the night. The candlesticks were lit. The kitchen was covered in mud from the barefoot folk who went in there.

At night José Felisimo answered my grandfather’s questions.

“The earth is soaked several inches below the surface. The water has uprooted four-fifths of the plants. The fence down at the bottom has been washed away. This year winter is going to be hard. Curamatau is already awash. A bad winter!”

The days seemed very long. There was nowhere to go. I looked at the river. It was the same everywhere, rain pouring down monotonously, impertinently.

In the evening the fieldworkers arrived, soaked from head to foot, their skin caked in mud, their hands frozen, their straw hats dripping, weighed down with water. But they shrugged off the bad weather. You would think they were dressed in warm woollen clothes. They took with them some salted cod for their women and children and went to sleep satisfied, as if they slept in a rich man’s warm bed.

Inside their houses the rain brought in by the wind softened the mud floor, making little rivulets. The flour sacks were their kingly mattresses placed on beds made from wood from the quince trees, where they snuggled up and made their children, satisfied with the world.

They went to work with the rain on their backs and returned home with the rain on their backs. Their illnesses were cured by the cold water from heaven. But in a short while they would have green maize and ripe barley in abundance to fill their bellies.

Now that my aunt had gone those rainy days made me sadder still, alone with my own company. I woke up in the morning with the sound of the rain running in the gutter. There was no sign of the birds. I would stretch out on the bed thinking about life. Everyone told me I was a retard. Twelve years old and I knew nothing. There were children my age who could do accounts and make financial transactions. This came from going to school.

I knew some bad things. I pulled on my willy too much. I was a prodigy where it came to filth. There in my room bad thoughts led me pleasant masturbations. The negress Luisa had left me, with her belly sticking out proudly, with the difficulties and worries of her first pregnancy. She was pregnant and she did not know by whom. They said the father was all the rascals of Santa Rosa.

I looked a lot at the statue of Saint Luís Gonzaga which my Aunt Maria had left in my room. I was ashamed of performing my sins in front of the eyes of that saintly boy. I sincerely repented of my lasciviousness, furious wretched beast that I was.

And the following day, when the rain was pouring down outside, the devilish thoughts returned. I sullied the eyes of the saint with my shameless filthy deeds.

One day the rain stopped and the sun, taking revenge on the dark clouds that had covered his face, shone over the woods like never before. The insects made use of the ceasefire to come out, buzzing close to everyone’s ears, then dragging their fat behinds along the ground. Mane Firmino toasted the bugs. He covered them in dry flour and ate them,

“Better than chicken,” he would say.

When the rain stopped the air was stuffy and humid. They put the beans on the branches to dry in the yard. And they opened up the trunks of clothes and spread them on the flagstones. I went to see the new maize sticking out of the ground and the new born calves jumping like crazy in the corral. Their mothers were wild the first few days after they were born, irritated by the birth of their children. A creator sun helped mother earth in her work of creation. If the sun delayed, the caterpillars would cover the leaves. What we were asking for was a downpour to wash them away.

Sure enough it began to rain again and the shoots of maize began to grow, and the cane covered the meadows, and the cattle grew fatter, and the cows gave birth.